


adams street (growing up, promises, and the content of people's hearts)

by quincywillows



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: Childhood Friends, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Minor Farkle Minkus/Isadora Smackle, Minor Maya Hart/Josh Matthews, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, enjoy my friends. enjoy, originally taken down but reuploaded to help in these unfortunate world times we are living in..., she's back folks... she's back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 67,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23158699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quincywillows/pseuds/quincywillows
Summary: He cares about Riley tons. She’s one of his only friends, and undoubtedly his best. He takes her seriously and would keep any promise to her to the end of his life. If he’s proud to call her his best friend, then he supposes he must love her, too.“Then yeah, I love you. Iguess.”Riley smiles, a small twinkle in her eye making him feel left out of the loop. He may have a school year on her, but there are definitely times where Lucas feels like she’s infinitely smarter and wiser than he is. The expression she’s currently wearing, like she knows a secret he’s yet to have learned, always reinforces that feeling.“Good.” The smirk transforms to a grin, genuine and full of fondness. “I love you, too.”--Rereleasing to the world after a time off the interwebs, so yes surprise I bet you thought you'd seen the last of her...
Relationships: Lucas Friar/Riley Matthews
Comments: 1
Kudos: 54





	1. seven ( lucas )

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mikeshanlon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikeshanlon/gifts).



> So... here we are. Hi, darlins. How are y'all doing?
> 
> I originally took down this fic back in early 2019 because I had intentions to do something more with it. In that year, I've been totally absorbed by other projects, started a job, am attempting to young adult, all that good stuff. I still love this project with everything in me, and when a very persistent (and sweet) reader asked me if I might consider sharing the story with them again in this crazy time in the world because it gives them comfort, I thought... y'know? Yes. Yes, I should.
> 
> I won't joke or try to claim this story is groundbreaking or super important or gonna be worth millions someday. It's not. It won't. I have ideas for it, sure, but I think the way it is right now is enough to bring joy to people, and joy is something we should be sharing in abundance with one another right now. If this silly little fic can bring someone happiness for no cost and make this overwhelming world a bit softer right now, then that's what I'm about. That seems like the easiest choice ever, am I right?
> 
> So yes. Here is Adams Street, as some of y'all once knew it. And maybe you never knew it the first time around, in which case, welcome and enjoy!! I know things are wild right now and can feel scary, but take a deep breath, wash your hands, and be a little kinder than usual. We're going to get through this, y'all. Everything is going to be okay.
> 
> Let's make the content of our hearts as kind as possible these days. ♥
> 
> \--
> 
> Follow the playlist for Adams Street [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6AB8jMVVqymZgBfvrlAreH?si=zePcZrdeRMSDjJaI5cl5iw)!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Just yellow lines and tire marks,  
>  Sun-kissed skin and handlebars,  
> And where I stood  
> Was where I was to be._
> 
> \-- Sara Barielles, "Once Upon Another Time"

Lucas can remember the day she moved in across the street.

It’s an impressive feat all things considered, since he’s only eight years old and not much in his life exactly counts as a memory. Most of his life exists in fleeting beats rather than actual concrete events worth consolidating into a memory. His grandpa is always telling him he should commit it all to memory while he can, because in a few years he’ll be all grown up and he’ll be amazed how little of his childhood he actually remembers.

His life is pretty dang boring in his humble opinion, so he doesn’t see what’s so wrong with forgetting it all. So long as it’s replaced with something exciting.

Before her, growing up on Adams Street in the idyllic suburbs of Philadelphia was anything but that. Sure, it was safe, and okay, it was located within a great school district (not that he really cares about that) and came at an affordable rate (his father really cares about that). There’s a library that holds a weekly writers group that his mother can attend, and his father’s new position at the accounting firm downtown pays double than what the one in Austin did.

His parents can paint it any which way they like, and they certainly love to highlight their own personal benefits. But their new neighborhood with its fancy porches and marketed child-friendly cul-de-sacs with neighborhood watch doesn’t have a whole lot of children, so Lucas spends much of his formative years missing his grandparents and best friends from Texas and being painfully, eternally bored.

When the Matthews finally bought the house across the way, Lucas initially goes over to ask if he can climb the big oak tree in the front yard. His mother always scolded him for wanting to and claimed it was up to whomever owned the place to decide if he was allowed, but for so long there was no one to ask so it was just another thing for him to stare longingly at from his porch steps on a hot summer day.

Somehow, he gets roped into helping them unload boxes from the moving truck instead. He can’t remember if it was his mother’s suggestion or Mrs. Matthews, but he’s not happy about it.

He doesn’t even realize there’s a third person moving in until an acorn clocks him behind the ear, and he catches a brief glimpse of purple disappear behind the trunk of the tree.

Mrs. Matthews beckons her daughter out from behind the oak and scolds her, insisting she apologize for nicking him with the acorn. She does so—more out of necessity than genuine regret—before ducking behind her mother’s legs and peering at him shyly.

From tossing tree nuts at him to being undeniably bashful a moment later, Lucas learns quickly that Riley Matthews is an incredibly complex human being. She’s a puzzle he’s probably going to spend his entire life trying to piece together completely, and that seems like a lot of work for a kid just starting kindergarten and is still learning to tie his shoes.

But then, she’s the only option he’s got for a companion on Adams Street, so he figures he should take what he can get.

Even more surprising than the vividness of the day she moved in is how swiftly she wins him over. He intends to establish the friendship conditionally, making it clear that they’re friends out of convenience and that he’s the one with the aged wisdom they should be following. But Riley proves to be a force to be reckoned with, and before long she’s calling the shots with her vocal enthusiasm and rich imagination.

The weirdest thing is that Lucas doesn’t even care. She worms her way into his life with no hesitation aside from that initial shyness, and the friendship that forms between them is so fast and strong that he finds himself feeling as though she’s been there by his side his entire life. Not that five years is a very long life, but it’s all he’s got, and she basically consumes all of it.

Considering they’re the only two kids on the block, it isn’t surprising. But at least he’s no longer bored out of his mind.

Three years of this dynamic only strengthens the bond, and by the time he’s eight years old he’s sharing the information that his best friend is Riley Matthews with unbridled pride. Sometimes the other third grade boys give him grief for having a girl for a best friend, but Lucas doesn’t think much of it. They don’t know her like he does, and he doubts they have anyone nearly as fascinating, captivating, and downright entertaining in their lives as her.

On this particularly sunny afternoon in June, however, she’s being undeniably dull.

They’re sitting on the porch steps in front of his house, having spent so much of the day outside that his mother came out to scold him for not wearing enough sunscreen. He doesn’t see what the big deal is—he’s barely got enough skin for the sun to hurt and he tans anyway—but his mother is always yelling at him about something so he just brushes it off.

The day didn’t start off a bore, Lucas has to remind himself. Just like usual, Riley is presenting her full range of human emotion, currently offering a compelling mix of stubbornness and frustration.

Riley’s purple bike is laying in the grass, abandoned with its pink handlebar confetti blowing lightly in the passing breeze. Lucas stretches out his legs, kicking the heels of his sneakers against the step below them. “We can always try again.”

“No.”

He glances at Riley next to him. He wonders how much purple can exist on a person at one time—between her helmet, knee pads, cat t-shirt, and ponytail holders keeping her double braids in place on her shoulders, she must be breaking a record of some kind.

When she catches him eyeing her, she huffs, turning up her nose. Holding her ground.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he agrees, sighing loudly. “We should just give up. We should just sit here on the steps forever and let the sun melt our skin off like my mom thinks. Then we’ll die and that’ll be it.”

Riley gasps, shock on her face as she swivels to face him. She shoves him lightly. “Stop! You’re not supposed to talk about that.”

“What?”

“Dying,” she says nervously, voice just above a whisper. She frowns. “That’s the kind of stuff you’re not supposed to talk about. Because if you talk about it, then you jinx it. My mommy is always saying it’s a shame when little kids die. On the news and stuff.”

“I don’t think they die because they _talk_ about dying.”

She reaches forward and shoves her hand to his lips, causing him to nudge it away. “Shh!”

“You’re being dumb,” he says, scowling at her. He gestures to her bicycle waiting forlornly in the yard in front of them. “You’re the one making us sit here. You could be riding your bike, but you’re being dumb about it.”

“It _sounded_ like fun,” she says moodily. “Wind in my hair, flying down the road. Seems real graceful—daddy taught me that word, it means very nicely and not clumsy-like. I’d be just like a princess.”

“Princesses don’t ride bikes.”

“Says _who_?”

“I don’t know, people!” Lucas shrugs, picking at the Cuddle Bunny band-aid on his knee. “It doesn’t even matter if you’re not going to actually ride it.”

Riley shifts her gaze to the yard, expression shifting from fear to irritation. She crosses her arms, letting out another huff. “It hurt my feelings.”

“I’m sure it’s real sorry about that.”

She crinkles her nose, obviously not convinced.

He doesn’t know what it is, but something about the way she looks when she does that always make him feel weird. Some part of his stomach clenches, and sometimes he wonders if he might throw up. That’s what stomach problems usually indicate, at least.

“Look, can you just give it one more try?” Lucas turns to face her, bringing his feet back up to match hers on the steps. He makes to step on her sandaled toes until she can’t help but smile, shoving his knees and giggling. “If you try again, then we can stop. I won’t say another word about it.”

She looks towards the bike, exhaling. She raises an eyebrow at him. “Only one more? Then no more?”

Lucas nods.

“And you’ll leave it alone?”

Lucas nods again, pretending to zip his lips and throw away the key.

“Promise?”

If he thinks hard enough about it, Lucas can’t count on both hands how many promises he’s made to Riley in the last three years. She tends to ask for them like passing the salt at the dinner table—a promise is more of a favor, a general assurance than an agreement you’d stake your life on. But he takes them seriously, because despite her silliness he takes her seriously. He doesn’t want her to think otherwise.

“Promise,” he concurs. Jumping to his feet, he holds out a hand to help her up.

Determination taking over her features, she ignores his help and leaps off the steps, marching down to the lawn and tugging her bicycle from the grass. He shakes his head, hopping the last two steps and jogging after her.

Once she’s got the bike back to the sidewalk, the two of them take up their usual positions. It’s been a long, dramatic endeavor teaching Riley to ride without her training wheels, but Lucas is happy to do it. He knows from her complaining that her parents are busy with her new baby brother, and he doesn’t mind the excuse to spend more time out in the fresh air rather than cooped up in his room doing nothing.

Riley straightens her helmet on her head, tip of her toes just barely grazing the pavement. It’s really Lucas keeping her steady, holding the back of the seat with one hand and gripping her shoulder with the other. “Ready?”

“Think so,” she breathes, staring down the sidewalk with resolve burning in her brown eyes. She grips the handlebars so tight her knuckles turn white. “Feet on the pedals. Balance. Go straight ahead.”

“Uh huh.”

“I can do it. I can do it,” she mutters to herself, wiggling restlessly.

It’s obvious she thinks she’s being subtle with her solo pep talk, but Lucas doesn’t mind. He smiles to himself, trying hard not to laugh.

She whips around to look at him over her shoulder, braid nearly whipping him in the face. “Lucas!”

“What?” He realizes he must not have heard her, lost in his own head.

For all her confidence in giving it one last go, the vulnerability shining through her gaze as she locks eyes with him gives her away. “You’re going to help me, right?”

Lucas doesn’t judge her—change is scary, and it’s no fun going through it alone. Besides, it’s nice to feel needed. Especially by his best friend.

“Right here,” he affirms, giving her a salute and patting her shoulder bracingly.

She grins in response, showing off the gap where the baby tooth she lost a couple of days before used to be. Then she whips back around, adjusting her grip on the handlebars and nodding. “Let’s do this thing!”

Riley begins pedaling forward, slow at first. Lucas walks along with her, hanging onto the back of the seat as the bike picks up speed. He stays up with her until she’s going fast enough that it’s hard to hold on. He trips over himself to keep up, wondering if maybe he should’ve worn the knee pads.

“I’m letting go on three,” he tells her, squinting in the sun peeking through the trees. The other end of the sidewalk seems so far away, but he knows it’ll come faster than he anticipates. “Okay?”

“No, Lucas, don’t let go,” she says in a panic, bicycle wobbling slightly from her reaction.

“It’s okay, you got this.”

“Lucas, don’t!”

“One, two—!”

Riley screams the moment he lets go of the seat, barreling down the sidewalk ahead of him as he stumbles to a stop. Despite her fears she manages to stay upright, feet continuing to pedal even without him. Officially free of the training wheels.

Lucas beams as her scream turns into laughter. He’s always been proud to call Riley Matthews his best friend, and now is certainly one of those moments where he feels it the most.

“I’m doing it! Lucas, look, I’m really doing it!”

He cheers, clapping and jumping loud enough for her to hear. She glances over her shoulder to smile at him, bicycle wobbling just slightly.

When she looks away, her confidence falters slightly. “How do I stop?”

Uh-oh. Lucas hadn’t thought about that part.

Riley continues to careen down the sidewalk, speedily approaching the end of their street corner and the street which connects them to the next block. They’re not supposed to leave their cul-de-sac. If Riley goes too far because he didn’t teach her how to brake, she’ll get in trouble and it’ll be all his fault.

“Lucas!”

He takes off down the sidewalk after her, pumping his legs as hard as he can. “Go backwards! Rewind the pedals!”

“Rewind the pedals?” she repeats incredulously, obviously confused. The bike grows more unsteady the closer she gets to the curb. “What does that mean?”

“Back pedal!” he pants, continuing his sprint in her direction. But the bike is so much faster than him. “Move them backwards! Push the pedals—,”

The instruction comes too late. Riley’s panic disrupts her control over the vehicle and she lets go of the handlebars entirely, both her and the bike taking a nose dive into the grass between the sidewalk and the road at the end of their block.

“Riley!”

Lucas scrapes his knees on the pavement as he drops down next to her, pulling the bicycle off of her and pushing it to the side. He immediately launches into damage control, trying to assess the seriousness of the situation.

All he can think about is whether or not she’s crying. It’s his least favorite thing when she cries, most of all when it’s because of something he did.

The first thing he notices is the shallow scratches on her ankles, then the sizable gash below her knee where the bike landed on top of her. He’s already doing the mental preparation for what it’s going to take to fix it, kicking himself for forcing her to get on that bike again.

“Are you okay?”

The huge smile on her face is the last thing he’s expecting to see when he forces himself to meet her eyes. She reaches out and grabs his arms, excitement practically radiating off of her.

“Did you see that? Did you see me ride it? I did it!”

He blinks. “Yeah, you did.”

“I didn’t think I could do it, but then I did!” Her grip on his shirt sleeve is tight, and she shakes him slightly with her enthusiasm. “Take that, bike! Ha-ha! I did it!”

Leave it to Riley Matthews to fall flat on her face and take it in stride. He finds himself smiling in spite of himself.

“Let’s go again,” she says breathlessly, clambering to her feet. Lucas has to take a moment to catch up with her, spinning around to follow her as she picks the bike up off the ground. “Show me how to do the rewind thing. So then I can stop. Then I’ll go again—,”

“Hey, hey,” he says urgently, hopping up and nudging her back a bit. He takes the handlebars from her fingers, stepping between her and the bike. “I think that’s good for today.”

“What? Why not?” she says indignantly.

He eyes the scrape on her leg, grateful she fell mostly on the grass. Knowing she should get patched up before she attempts anything else. “You did awesome. But you gotta take things like this slow. You wanna do them right. Move too fast through things, you’re gonna get hurt. You’ll mess it up.”

The nose crinkle is back. “Says _who_?”

“Me. I say so. I’m in third grade, and you’re only in second. So I think I’m smarter here.”

It’s hard to argue with that logic at eight years old. Riley huffs, rolling her eyes. “Fine.”

Lucas smiles, wheeling the bike around and beginning the walk back towards their houses. Riley skips alongside him, hopping over the cracks in the sidewalk.

“You did see it though, right?”

“I sure did,” Lucas says approvingly. He smiles at her. “It was super cool.”

She smiles smugly, evidently proud of herself. A moment of silence passes between them before she speaks again, throwing a curveball at him as she so often does.

“Lucas, do you love me?”

He makes a face, at a loss for words as he attempts to process the question. The word _love_ jumps out at him, sending an uncomfortable shiver through his body he can only describe as utter disgust. Weirdly enough, his stomach clenches right on cue.

“Ew, no,” he says empathetically, scowling at her. “Gross!”

“Not like _that_ ,” she says in a sing-song voice, obviously amused by his completely inaccurate assumption. “Like, the way my mommy described it to me. She says that love comes in all kinds of forms. But the most important thing is that you care about someone, and respect them, and want what’s best for them. So she loves my daddy, but she loves me and Auggie too. And her friends. And stuff. But either way, it’s really, really important. The most important thing in the world.”

Lucas chews on this. He doesn’t exactly get what it all means or what Mrs. Matthews is doing wasting all this time thinking about stuff like this anyway, but based on that definition alone he thinks maybe the answer is yes.

He cares about Riley tons. She’s one of his only friends, and undoubtedly his best. He takes her seriously and would keep any promise to her to the end of his life. If he’s proud to call her his best friend, then he supposes he must love her, too.

“Then yeah, I love you. I _guess_.”

Riley smiles, a small twinkle in her eye making him feel left out of the loop. He may have a school year on her, but there are definitely times where Lucas feels like she’s infinitely smarter and wiser than he is. The expression she’s currently wearing, like she knows a secret he’s yet to have learned, always reinforces that feeling.

“Good.” The smirk transforms to a grin, genuine and full of fondness. “I love you, too.”


	2. nine ( riley )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Oh, darling, don’t you ever grow up,  
>  Don’t you ever grow up,  
> It could stay this simple._
> 
> \-- Taylor Swift, "Never Grow Up"

After five years of friendship, Lucas Friar is easily Riley Matthew’s favorite person in the entire world.

She likes to think things happen for a reason, and so she figures it has to be fate that he lived across the street when she moved to their new home in Pennsylvania. Growing up in New York had been amazing even if she can’t remember most of it, but with another kid on the way her parents decided a tiny apartment wasn’t going to cut it. So they packed up everything and returned to the place her father grew up, leaving the glamor of New York behind for the simple, slow-paced suburbs.

It’s not the worst place to grow up, and Riley finds endless charm within the tree-lined streets and cozy single family homes. But meeting Lucas made it infinitely better.

He’s a bit of a weirdo. He is obsessed with horses, and he’s read her every book he has on them cover to cover. Every shirt he owns is a shade of blue. She feels like he’s always wearing a new band-aid when they see each other again, and he’s got this sandy blonde hair that tends to stick up on the back of his head no matter how much he brushes it.

She finds herself constantly itching to nitpick at him until everything is order, the way her mother does with her father. They way she’ll adjust his tie before he heads off to work, or flatten the hair on the back of his head affectionately as she leans over him at the kitchen table to read over his shoulder. Constantly adjusting him so he’s in perfect condition for whoever else has to deal with him throughout the day, almost like a protective gesture.

One time, Riley licks her thumb and attempts to flatten the cowlick on the back of Lucas’s head when they’re hanging out on his front porch. He escapes her grasp before she can complete the job, practically rolling down the steps in a desperate getaway.

He’s a weirdo, but Riley decides that’s what she likes most about him. He’s completely unique, a constellation of strange behavior and little idiosyncrasies that only she gets to claim as her best friend. Much like the glow-in-the-dark stars creating constellations on her ceiling, she’s incredibly fond of him.

Even still, it’s a thrill when other children begin moving into the neighborhood, broadening their friend group and her horizons.

Zay Babineaux arrives in the house next door to Lucas, and although he’d never admit it to her out loud she can tell he’s ecstatic to have another boy join their neighborhood. Not that they’d never roughhoused or played catch, but Lucas was always afraid of hurting her and Riley’s got terrible hand-eye coordination. The simple fact of the matter is Zay is much more suited to those activities than she is, and she’s happy to let him take over if it makes Lucas happy.

Maya Hart moves into a house on the next block, and the night she appears in her backyard when she’s eight years old they become inseparable. She offers something new to Riley’s well-structured and straight-laced childhood, full of fire and mischief and infectious energy. They also share a love of online dress up games, creative nail painting, and watching the new show _Red Planet Diaries_ —events that Lucas always went along with at Riley’s request, but weren’t exactly his favorite pastimes.

Although the arrival of their new friends shifts their dynamic, Riley isn’t worried. They’re Riley and Lucas, and he’s been her best friend for as long as she can remember. He’s her favorite person. Absolutely nothing can change that.

From what she can tell from the conversations her mother has with Ms. Hart, Maya’s family also has more baggage than Riley’s ever been exposed to before. Maya doesn’t talk about it and Riley doesn’t push her to—she figures she’ll share if she wants to and when she’s ready. But it does get her thinking, looking at the world with lenses a little less rose-colored than before.

When she can’t sleep, she finds herself wondering what goes on behind all the closed doors of her classmates that she doesn’t know about. Even her closest friends—what troubles does Zay have going on in his head that he’s not sharing with them? What does Lucas face in the hours that they’re not together that he’s not telling her about?

It haunts her at night when she can’t drift off, but for the most part she’s an easy sleeper. For a fourth grader, life’s pretty good, and she figures she should leave the worrying to the adults. She’s got her friends, and that’s all she needs.

The older they get, the more idiosyncrasies Lucas acquires that drive her crazy. He grows about two inches out of nowhere. He starts picking on her more often, flicking her ponytail or poking at her even when she tells him to stop. He starts wearing baseball caps from the little league team he and Zay joined over the summer, but he wears them backwards which makes no sense.

But at least it hides the insufferable cowlick, so she supposes they kind of cancel each other out.

It’s not that the attention and teasing makes her uncomfortable—she’s done her fair share of teasing in his direction—it’s just that it’s different, and she doesn’t quite understand where it’s coming from or if she should be bothered by it.

Honestly, she kind of likes the constant attention even if it’s obnoxious in mentality. One of her greatest fears has always been at some point he’d find someone else better than her to be friends with and lose interest in her altogether. She feels lucky to have avoided that with Zay, that they get to share him, but there’s nothing to say it can’t happen sooner or later.

With the constant teasing, at least she knows she’s still got his attention. If it means keeping him in her life and as her best friend, she can put up with a little picking.

“I’m just saying, if Wyatt was really a good cubby buddy then the least he could do would be to stop leaving his uneaten sandwiches there until I have to throw them away,” Maya grumbles. Her focus is trained solely on the chalk drawing she’s crafting on the sidewalk leading up to Riley’s front door, but she’s skillful enough to maintain a conversation while working. “Like, they’re bologna! That’s gross the first day it sits there. It doesn’t get any better.”

“That’s so gross,” Riley agrees. She focuses on her own drawing, finishing adding a whisker in purple chalk to her masterpiece of a cat. “Why doesn’t he just take it home?”

“Because he’s stupid.”

“I don’t know if we should say that,” she says diplomatically, wincing when she feels an acorn hit the back of her head. She rolls her eyes, whipping around to glare at the oak tree above them. “What?”

Lucas smirks at her from his perch in the branches, far above them and obviously proud of it. He shrugs innocently, his sneaker-clad feet dangling idly.

“Speaking of stupid,” Maya murmurs pointedly.

Riley gives her a look, before turning her gaze back towards her best friend. “That’s like the fifth one. Sure you don’t have anything to say?”

“Fifth what?”

“Fifth what?” Riley repeats back mockingly. “You know what.”

Lucas procures another acorn from his sweatshirt pocket, rolling it in his fingers. He grins, offering another indifferent shrug. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Even the wires on his braces are blue. Maybe it’s because she’s doomed by best friendship to see everything about him fondly, but she finds it impressive he can make dental braces look charming.

“You don’t have to sit up there,” Riley reminds him. She keeps the irritation in her tone, but part of her wants him to come down and join them simply because she prefers him close rather than so far away. “You could come down here and join us like a normal person.”

“Oh, please, he can’t do that,” Maya teases. She spares one glance in his direction, disdain coloring her features. “With Zay off at ballet practice for however much longer it’s all he can do to sit up there and pout. Boys get like that.”

“Like you know anything about boys,” Lucas retorts.

“More than you do, probably.”

Riley can’t help but wonder just how much her friend actually knows about the opposite gender. It’s only this year that suddenly it seems like she and her classmates are becoming aware of their differing gender identities when it’s never made a difference before. People are suddenly getting _crushes_ , and it seems as though boys and girls are sectioning off into quarantined groups whenever possible.

She worries she’s behind and doesn’t know as much as she’s supposed to. But she’s grateful it hasn’t seemed to affect her friendship with Zay or Lucas—especially Lucas. Again, he’s being more obnoxious than usual, but at least he’s not ditching her entirely.

Riley feels another acorn whisk past her ear. She elects to ignore it, not giving him the satisfaction of a response.

Maya raises her eyebrows, peeking at him out of the corner of her eye before focusing back on Riley. “You know why he does that, right?”

“Boredom, I think.”

Maya laughs, shaking her head at her naivety. Riley frowns, suddenly feeling even more unprepared than usual.

“What? Why are you laughing?”

She glances at him to make sure he’s not listening. He’s currently distracted, squinting at the cheap brick of plastic that’s supposedly his brand new cellphone he got when he entered fifth grade. It looks more like a hand-me-down from ten years ago his parents kept around in a drawer, but he’d never, ever admit to that and Riley doesn’t push him on it. She knows he thinks it’s pretty cool, and she’s not going to be the one to disagree with his utter coolness.

“Riles, he’s not using you for target practice because he’s bored.” Maya locks eyes with her, prepping a signature smirk that Riley has come to associate with either impending excitement or big trouble. “He’s doing it because he likes you.”

“Of course he likes me. He’s my best friend. But he didn’t used to—,”

“Ugh, not like that. Like, he _likes_ you likes you.”

There’s a long moment of silence where Riley attempts to absorb this interpretation. The terminology seems so new, the concepts so foreign, it just doesn’t seem like something that could be a possibility. Not that she would fully understand even if it were.

“What?” she finally stammers. “No he does not.”

“Yes, he does,” Maya says matter-of-factly, and from her confident tone alone it’s hard not to automatically believe her. “Lucas has a big, fat, crush on you, but his stupid boy brain doesn’t know how to deal with it so he throws acorns at you instead.”

Riley’s mouth hangs half-open, processing this brand new information. She trains her gaze at her best friend sitting so loftily above her in the trees, looking just like normal and far too at ease to have a crush. The way the other girls at her lunch table talk about it, having one sounds incredibly painful and just about the worst thing in the world.

Lucas meets her eyes, smiling at her. So cool, even with those dorky blue braces.

“No way,” Riley argues, turning her attention back to Maya.

Maya finishes her chalk art with a flourish, marveling at her handiwork. When Riley nudges her she sighs, raising her hands in surrender. “I’m only telling you what I know. And as you know, with my six month age gap over you, I am more informed.”

“Lucas says that all the time. He says his year over me makes him smarter and wiser.”

“Doesn’t count. Boys are dumb, so they lose like five years on principle.”

Riley’s momentarily distracted by the Babineaux minivan pulling back into their driveway, returning Zay from dance. Lucas sighs from the branches above them, leaves rustling as he moves from his bark-encrusted throne.

“Finally!” he shouts, lowering himself down from the branch and dangling a few feet off the ground. Riley bites back the urge to tell him to be careful, stemming from that same part of her that wants to flatten his cowlicks and fix his shirts.

He lands without a scratch, immediately taking off in the direction of Zay’s house. He greets him as he emerges from the back seat, the two of them completing some weird handshake before engaging in rapid fire conversation as Zay takes his duffle into the house.

“You know, if you want proof,” Maya says mysteriously, watching them disappear behind the screen door. She shifts her gaze to Riley, raising her eyebrows. “We can make it happen.”

“What do you mean?”

“When they come back out here.” Maya resituates herself, sitting cross-legged and propping her elbows on her knees. There’s a gleam in her eyes that alerts Riley to the presence of mischief in her brain, churning out the following ideas. She should proceed with caution. “You know how they’re all about dares now and being more stupid than usual?”

Riley grimaces, nodding. Lucas and Zay’s recent fascination with dares was one of her least favorite developments, as it usually toed the line of getting both of them into trouble, whether from breaking the rules or breaking themselves. Lucas’s band-aid count had gone up considerably since the boys started challenging each other on the playground last year, but rather than deter him like a sensible human being it just seemed to motivate him more.

For whatever reason, the stupider the dare, the more likely either boy was to do it. They riled each other up, picking on one another if they chickened out and hyping each other up if they succeeded. Riley is happy they’re so supportive of one another, she just wishes it would be in a more constructive fashion.

“Well, we’ll use that stupid to our advantage. When Lucas comes back, you dare him to kiss you.”

Riley feels her stomach drop down to her feet. “What?”

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. Do you think I would subject you to having Lucas Friar be your first kiss?” Maya shudders at the thought, collecting herself before continuing. “Listen. Boys are stupid, remember? So he’s going to do the opposite of what would be expected.”

“The… opposite.”

“Yes. So if you dare him to kiss you, he’s going to chicken out. Because he likes you, and kissing you would be like admitting that. Kissing you is like… the antithesis to chucking an acorn at you.”

“That doesn’t… what does antithesis mean?”

“Like, opposite. Josh taught it to me. Sometimes he has interesting things to say.”

Riley would like to spend some time pondering the growing complex nature of her friend’s feelings for her older uncle—at twelve, he feels more a cousin than an uncle, but beside the point—but she’s far too busy obsessing over exactly what Maya is suggesting she do.

She had not even begun to consider what her first kiss would be like. It always seemed so far away, like a distant blur she’d have to confront at a later time. But it seemed like something that should be handled with care, at the right time with the right person. Not siphoned off as the butt of a joke or the confusing conclusion to an already confusing hypothesis.

And certainly not as a dare.

That’s not even factoring in the Lucas of it all. Aside from the fact that she’s absolutely positive he doesn’t have a crush on her—he’s in fifth grade and is so very cool—kissing him is something that has never crossed her mind. He’s her best friend, the person she’s known practically since she gained self-awareness.

Her uncle Eric and uncle Jack kiss because they’re fiancés. Her mother and father kiss, because they’re married and they love each other. Best friends do not kiss.

But then, she does love Lucas. She loves him deeply, as she has basically since she met him. Does that mean they’re supposed to kiss?

All she knows about kisses is that they have meaning, and they change things. She doesn’t even know if she’s ready to have one. Let alone with someone so important to her with whom she wants absolutely nothing to change.

Maya shakes her out of her internal panic before she can properly exhaust all possible outcomes of the situation. “Here they come.”

Lucas and Zay head up the driveway, talking animatedly and barely paying them any attention. This buys Riley a few seconds of time to pull herself together and make up her mind. She takes in Lucas heading right for her, with his dumb backwards baseball cap and scraped up knees. When he looks towards her and smirks, the same one he’d been sending her while pelting acorns at the back of her head, she suddenly thinks maybe he could use a little bit of a surprise.

She puffs her chest out, emulating the confidence of her friend standing next to her. Standing tall, ready to test a theory and prove it false.

“Lucas, Riley has something she’d like to tell you.”

“Oh, this is going to be good,” Zay says cheerfully, rubbing his hands together. “Are you finally gonna yell at him for the acorns? And the tickling? And the time he tied your shoelaces together on the blacktop—?”

“Zay!” Lucas snaps, sending him a warning look.

Riley doesn’t have the time to harp on the fact that he was one who played that trick on her. She always suspected it was him since his teasing kicked up a notch, and at the moment she’s got bigger fish to fry. “No. I’m not.”

“Boo. No fun.”

“No, I have a different task for Mr. Friar,” she says sweetly, clasping her hands behind her back. She smirks, hoping she’s conveying the right amount of mystery and allure. “I have a dare.”

It’s almost comical how swiftly Lucas and Zay’s expressions shift, growing infinitely more interested. Maya smiles next to her, crossing her arms and watching the exchange with rapt attention.

“A dare?” Lucas narrows his eyes suspiciously. “I thought you hated dares. You’re always telling me how dumb they are.”

“Well, not this one. This one is a good one.”

Zay looks back and forth between the two of them. “Well?”

“Yeah, if you’re gonna say it, go ahead and say it.”

“I don’t know,” she says loftily, lifting her gaze to the clouds and shrugging. Getting caught up in the game between them, she starts to forget why they’re even doing the dare in the first place. She’s having fun teasing it out, and it’s nice to have all of Lucas’s attention back on her like she’s grown so accustomed to. “I feel like it’s not worth it. I feel like he’ll chicken out.”

“I will not.” Lucas frowns, standing up straighter and licking his lips. “I’m not afraid of anything. Let’s go, tell me and I’ll do it.”

Maya’s grinning like an idiot, tongue sticking out between her teeth. She exchanges a knowing look with Riley, tossing her hair over her shoulder as the latter clears her throat.

“Okay.” Riley conjures up all the daring she has in her, raising her chin and coming off as aloof as she possibly can. “I dare you to kiss me.”

She wishes she could capture his reaction on camera so she could laugh at it forever. His steely demeanor falls away in an instant and his jaw drops open slightly, obviously not prepared for this proposition. Zay looks even more shocked, watching the two of them like a tennis match with his jaw on the floor.

The crack in Lucas’s voice is even funnier. “Huh?”

“I dare you to kiss me,” Riley repeats, allowing the sheer stunning power of the statement to boost her confidence. Lucas fights to recover his cool, shoving his hands in his pockets and eyebrows crinkling. Riley tosses a glance to Maya, who returns it pointedly.

“It’s okay, like I said, I didn’t think you’d be able to do it. Not all dares are doable. At least, not for everybody—,”

“Okay,” Lucas interrupts her.

Riley’s turn to be unprepared. She hesitates, voice wavering slightly. “Huh?”

“Okay.” Lucas’s obnoxious façade has repaired itself, determination coloring his features as he faces the dare like he would any other. “I’ll do it.”

He steps forward, taking Riley’s arm and pulling her towards him. His touch is surprisingly gentle. This wasn’t part of the plan, and she’s practically frozen as Lucas gets closer to her. It feels like life is suddenly moving in slow motion, drawing out each second that he gets closer to putting his lips on hers.

The moment she smells spearmint toothpaste, she cracks.

“No!” she screams, wrenching herself from his grasp and taking off at a run towards her porch. She can hear Zay cracking up behind her as she darts into her house and slams the door behind her, not allowing herself to look back at her best friends while the terror of her near first kiss still washes over her.

“I can’t finish the dare if you’re not here to do it to!” Lucas calls from outside, a hint of amusement tinging his voice.

“Penalty foul,” Maya declares in her honor. “Ruling on the fact that the Riley does not deserve to be subjected to that kind of torture.”

It isn’t until she’s lying in bed that night attempting to fall asleep that Riley realizes the full events of what conspired in her driveway that afternoon. That according to Maya’s theory, Lucas being so willing to kiss means that she was wrong, and he unquestionably does not have a crush on her. And with her six month advantage over her, she has to believe Maya knows what she’s talking about.

She knows it’s for the best. She knows in her heart she’s not ready for a first kiss, let alone a crush, even if her classmates in fourth grade seem to be all over it. For now, she’s fine waiting a while and she’s fine keeping Lucas in her life exactly as he already is. No _like_ liking involved. And what a relief.

The confusing part of it is there’s a small, strange part of her that feels disappointed.


	3. eleven ( riley )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Winter, spring, summer or fall,  
>  All you have to do is call  
> And I’ll be there.  
> Now ain’t it good to know  
> That you’ve got a friend  
> When people can be so cold?_
> 
> \-- Carole King & James Taylor, "You've Got A Friend"

As the summers go by and Riley finds herself in her last year of safety in elementary school, she has effectively decided that she hates change.

It feels like it’s constantly looming over her like a shadow, casting doubt across everything she understands and holds dear. It threatens her through her future schooling, taunts her with her physical appearance, and haunts her with the unspeakable, unavoidable transformations waiting for her right around the corner.

She, like everyone else in the vast expanse of the universe, is a slave to the endless march of time. And she, for one, is not happy about it.

Her little brother is in a rather bratty phase, causing her family more grief than she thinks they deserve. Her uncle Eric is off to Washington D.C. to pursue his political career, leaving the home she’s known him in for so long and taking her uncle Jack with him. Her uncle Josh is off to high school, and he has decidedly less time to waste on his younger niece. Her classmates are getting into relationships they’re not ready for. One of her favorite television shows gets cancelled. And God, do not even get her started on the whole _puberty_ nonsense.

Girls in her class begin obsessing over their looks, make-up becoming a usual suspect in the upstairs bathrooms rather than the rare interest of an early bloomer. Riley can’t seem to figure it out—why would someone want to put those things near their _eyes_?—and on principle she decides to avoid it entirely. Maya complains about how everyone is getting taller and she can’t seem to grow an inch past five feet. Riley grows a couple of inches and suddenly feels like a giant, tromping around the playground like Godzilla.

Her mother comforts her by telling her not to worry so much about appearances. That it’s what inside that really matters, the content of people’s hearts, and that she’ll grow into her looks regardless. It seems a little cheap coming from Topanga, who may be the most beautiful woman Riley has ever known, but she accepts the advice.

She likes the thought—the content of people’s hearts. That the goodness inside of them is what keeps them beautiful, keeps them whole and breathing and alive. She hopes for what it’s worth that her heart is full of wonderful things.

Considering the gangly limbs and inability to keep her balance even on a good day, she figures the universe owes her one.

Zay grows a few inches but not enough to surpass her, Riley Superklutz, and it’s evident it embarrasses him to no end. She doesn’t get why—she’d rather be shorter, if she could have it her way—but he makes a point of making more jokes to make up for it. Sometimes they’re at her expense, sometimes not, but he quickly earns himself a reputation as class clown which seems to bolster his pride somewhat.

Maya seems nonchalant about his suddenly fragile self-esteem. “Boys are dumb. That doesn’t change no matter how old they get.”

One of Riley’s biggest grievances is that Lucas goes off to middle school without her, leaving her behind and intensifying that fear that he’ll lose interest and never look back.

So far, she’s lucky that seems to be the one thing he isn’t swapping around. Otherwise, every time she turns around she feels like there’s something different about him. The baseball caps disappear and he fashions himself a new haircut, one even more frustratingly messy than his usual cowlick nightmare. The braces come off before he heads off to seventh grade, and his dazzling smile sells Riley on the benefits of orthodontia. One day he ditches his worn down sneakers for a tough-looking pair of black boots, and she swears she never sees the tennis shoes ever again.

She wonders at what point he’s supposed to stop growing, gaining another couple of inches in height and maintaining his ability to prop his elbow on her shoulder with ease when they stand next to one another. It drives her crazy, but she’s also thankful he’s still taller than her. It’s nice to have someone out there make her feel like the short one for once.

More noticeable than any of that is his attitude.

Her mother warned her during their wholly uncomfortable puberty talk that with her changes may come mood swings, but Riley is fairly certain boys weren’t supposed to get that particular side effect. Yet Lucas is suddenly a whirlwind of moodiness, liable to shift temperaments faster than the weather and not exactly selective about who notices. He’s in trouble with teachers, he’s at war with his parents, even Riley isn’t safe from his snapping when the tides turn and his temper flares.

She’d never tell him about the tears his words cause because she’s certain he doesn’t mean it. Mostly, she cries because of the change itself rather than the particulars—because someone so important to her that she relies on to be predictable in her life is suddenly unequivocally unpredictable, and she has no idea how to handle it.

Her father claims this is typical phase for boys during childhood and that it’ll pass. But Zay doesn’t seem to be having the same amount of issues, so she doesn’t see how this could be true.

He’s angry so often, but she doesn’t understand why. He’s always been full of smiles and reassurances. Those are far and few between nowadays, and instead what she imagines when she pictures him is the troubled crinkle between his eyebrows. Paired with the scowl he’s sporting when he’s in a particularly bad mood, it’s a rather distressing combination.

The mood that upsets her the most is the empty one. The one where his expression seems so blank and he’s not looking at anything in particular but he feels a million and one miles away. She doesn’t know where he goes, but she absolutely hates the empty shell of himself he leaves in his absence. As if she wouldn’t even notice.

As if there’s any substitution for her best friend.

Maybe it’s because she spends so much time paying attention to him, but she doesn’t understand how no one else seems to notice. To her, it’s the most important thing—the indication that he’s not completely eaten by all that anger he suddenly seems to have, that her favorite person in the world is still in there someone but trapped beneath everything else.

She fixates on it, just like the rotating band-aids and cowlicks on the back of his head. Wishing she could smooth it out for him, protect him in the only way she knows how.

* * *

Her chance to do so arrives the evening after Lucas gets expelled.

It’s all the parents in the neighborhood can seem to talk about, and she watches through the living room window as her mother and Zay’s talk by the mailboxes for nearly twenty minutes in hushed tones. They continue to cast concerned glances in the direction of the house across the street, and Riley wonders why they think that’s good enough. She can’t help but think if they really cared about him, if they loved him, they’d do more than express concern. They’d act.

It’s then that she realizes she’s no better. She’s sitting on the couch watching from the sidelines while Lucas falls deeper into whatever pit he’s dug himself, and she’s done nothing to help pull him out. If the situation were reversed, she knows he’d run to her aid without a second thought. Whatever it took.

Riley pushes herself off the couch, sprinting to her bedroom and slamming her door behind her. Getting down to scheming.

She spends the afternoon perfecting her plan, only pausing for a moment to glance out her window as the Friar truck pulls back into their driveway. She watches as Lucas hops out from the back, avoiding his mother’s disappointed gaze as he heads into the house. Rather than the anger she was expecting, all she can trace from his expression is that empty, removed disposition. Her least favorite one.

She gets back to work, more determined than before. Ready to do whatever it takes.

A little after nine, Riley dons her best black ensemble and grabs her backpack off her desk. She sneaks her way down the stairs and makes a beeline for the back door, pausing only when her father passes by on his way to the kitchen for a post-dinner snack.

Fully committed to her plan, she crosses herself for luck—and a bit of drama—before easing open the back door and sneaking out into the night.

Riley is a bit surprised how easy it is to break the rules as she tears across the backyard, heart pounding in her chest just from the sheer thrill of doing exactly the opposite of what’s expected of her. All of the sudden, she sort of gets what Lucas and Zay must’ve found so entrancing about dares. The adrenaline coursing through her veins is a feeling she figures she could get addicted to without much else to distract her.

But this isn’t a stupid dare. This is a mission of love, and she’s not going to fail.

Looking both ways, Riley hops off the curb and crosses the street to Lucas’s. She rounds the back of the house, grateful their golden retriever Judy seems to be in for the night and won’t blow her cover. She pushes through the back gate and hunches over to speed past their kitchen window, making her way towards the tool shed she knows backs up to Lucas’s bedroom.

Ducking behind it, she peers around the side and up towards his window. It’s a relief to find the light on inside, indicating he’s exactly where he wants her.

She exhales, shaking her arms to expel her nerves and focusing on the next obstacle in her plan. She’s got to get up to that window, and the only thing in her way is the big, hulking tool shed. It’s supposedly where Kenneth Friar does construction projects to calm himself, but she doesn’t think she’s ever seen him actually out there. It’s hard to think of a time she’s seen Kenneth Friar around at all.

Bracing herself, she grits her teeth and carefully grabs the chain-link wrapped around the side of the shed. “Just like the rock wall,” she convinces herself, thinking about the small, child-friendly structure erected on their playground at school.

This, she knows, is far from child-friendly. But she forces herself to swallow her hesitation, determined to get to her best friend in this time of need. Knowing he would do the same for her with even less reservations.

Painstakingly, she scales her way up the side of the shed, keeping her eyes on the roof ahead of her and working as silently as she can.

When she places both feet on the shingles of the shed roof and holds out her arms for balance, there’s a terrifying moment where she imagines herself falling through the ceiling and crashing to her death in Kenneth’s abandoned tool shed. Never to be seen again, wearing her jeans and black sweatshirt and purple beanie with the cat ears because she couldn’t find her dad’s vintage ski cap from when he and her mother went to some lodge in their teen years.

The moment passes, and she’s filled once again with adrenaline and a deep sense of accomplishment. She has to resist the urge to cheer, reminding herself she’s supposed to stealthy and settling for a subtle fist bump as she scrambles across the roof towards Lucas’s window.

Yes, she could see herself getting addicted to that feeling. She takes a note to apologize to Zay tomorrow for making fun of him so much over the dare obsession.

She collapses to her knees in front of his window, thanking her lucky stars the shed bumps right up to his side of the house and that she doesn’t have to further risk life or death to reach her final destination. She peers in through the glass, attempting to get a read on the situation.

Lucas is collapsed on his bed on the other end of the room, turned away from the window and curled up against the wall. He’s never been one to own a room with his presence, but this posture alone indicates to Riley that the situation is serious. It’s a real problem, and she’s not going to let him face it all by himself.

Confidently, she taps on his window. He perks up, looking around the room in confusion before settling on the window. For a moment he just stares at her, dumbstruck, until she waves at him urgently and gestures him towards her.

Lucas rolls over and falls out of bed, stumbling to the window and working to unlatch it. She notes his simple ensemble of his plain blue sweatshirt and basketball shorts, his typical nightwear which likely means he was just going to lay there until he inevitably fell asleep. Another sure sign of trouble—Lucas Friar is every bit a night owl to contrast with her early bird, so him going to bed at nine o’clock screams distress.

He finally manages to get the window open, stiff from years of disuse. He keeps his voice low. “Riley?”

“Hi.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” He peers behind her, furrowing his brow. “How the hell did you get up here?”

“H-word,” she says prudently, unable to let the bad language slip even in such a dire situation. Lucas rolls his eyes in response. “Don’t you question your best friend when she’s on a mission to rescue you. Can I come in?”

He is still clearly dumbfounded by her presence. But he nods, backing up and giving her room to climb through the window. She starts forward and gets halfway in before losing her balance, Lucas reaching out and taking her hands to steady her. She flashes him a grin, gripping his fingers tightly as she propels herself through the rest of the way.

“Did you climb up the shed? Are you nuts?”

“I prefer loyal,” she argues. “You’re sure ungrateful considering I just risked my life for you. I could have died out there on that shed.”

“That’s the stuff you’re not supposed to talk about,” he says flatly, mocking her former fears.

At present, Riley doesn’t think she knows the meaning of the word fear. “Riley Matthews fears no cosmic consequence. Especially at the expense of her best friend. I even wore my best black ensemble for the mission.”

Lucas gives her a once over, unimpressed.

“Your hat is purple.”

She tries not to let his lack of admiration at her efforts hurt her feelings. She knows he’s had a rough day, along with all the constant anger he seems to live with these days.

“We make do with what we have,” she defends herself. She wanders around him and stops at his desk, slipping her backpack off her shoulder. “But don’t fret. I come with gifts.”

Lucas shushes her, glancing over his shoulder towards his closed bedroom door. “Don’t talk so loud. They’ll hear you. I’m not supposed to have girls in here.”

“I don’t count. Also, since when is you having girls over a big thing?” She gives him an eyebrow raise, coming off teasing but also genuinely intrigued by the answer. “Have you ever actually _had_ a girl in here aside from me?”

“That’s not the point.”

“You’re right, it’s not.” She fishes her presents out of her backpack, holding out the stack of books for him to take. He does, clumsily, catching them before they slip out of his hands and onto the floor. “I don’t think anyone is going to be in your room for a while.”

Lucas settles onto his bed with the armful, depositing them next to him so he can look at each of the covers more carefully. He hesitates on the encyclopedia of horses, an enormous hardcover Riley secretly assumes holds more information on the creatures than any normal human being would ever care to know. But he’s not normal, he’s a weirdo, and he’s her weirdo who is obsessed with horses even if all his other interests shift with time.

“What are these for?”

“I figure if you’re grounded, you’ll have a lot of time to kill.” She clasps her hands behind her back, rocking on the balls of her feet. “So I thought you might like some reading materials to get you through it.”

He eyes her critically. “I got expelled, not grounded. There’s a difference.”

“Am I supposed to believe you getting expelled did not immediately lead to a grounding?”

There’s a long pause. Lucas holds her gaze until he can’t fake it any longer, huffing and rolling his eyes.

“That’s what I thought.”

He sifts through the rest of the books, his expression softening a bit at the range of material. She tried her best to pick topics she thought he would find enjoyable without exhausting any of them, and it seems from his reaction that she succeeded. Once again proving how well she knows her best friend, not that she ever had any doubt.

His features grow suspicious when he locks eyes with her again. “Where did you get these?”

“Doesn’t matter. They’re yours to enjoy.”

Lucas’s deadpan only grows sharper with age. Ever so subtly, he raises an eyebrow at her.

“For two weeks,” she adds sheepishly. She twists her fingers, shifting her weight anxiously. “Library policy. But I could always get more. You name it, I’ll pick it up.”

“That’s what I thought.” He examines the covers for another long moment, exhaling a sigh. “But thanks. This is really nice.”

“You’re welcome. And you’ll let me know if you want new ones?”

“I’m not supposed to be communicating with anybody from now until summer. I’m grounded until the school year is up to ‘make up for the lack of schooling.’ No friends, no phone.” His face grows more sour as he continues to think about it, scowling. “So I don’t know how you expect me to tell you.”

“Like that’s ever stopped us before,” she says optimistically, wandering over to join him on the bed. She plops down on the edge, scanning the room for ideas. “You still have that walkie-talkie we used to use to talk past curfew?”

He pauses, contemplating. “Somewhere.”

“There you go,” she says matter-of-factly, elbowing him playfully. “You can’t escape me that easily.”

She’s relieved to see a smile ghost over his lips. “Guess not.”

“And you promise to tell me what books you want?”

He shifts his gaze to look at her, matching her challenging glare. But after a moment, his features soften. He nods, relenting.

“Promise.”

She smiles, accepting with a nod. Lucas has never broken one of his promises to her, and she doesn’t suspect he’s going to start now. Even with all the other changes, that’s something she doubts could ever turn all upside-down.

They sit in silence for a bit, Riley taking the time to examine the bedroom around him. Although she may very well be the only girl who’s stepped foot in it, even she has barely spent more than a few minutes at a time in the space. Lucas doesn’t seem to like it all that much himself, and it shows in the way it’s sparsely decorated.

The shelves are cluttered, but not with anything of substance. Aside from the dirty clothes on the floor and his backpack tossed to the side by the doorway, there’s barely anything to catch her attention. When she was little she didn’t think much of it, but having expanded in size since then she’s suddenly very aware of how cramped the space is. Especially for a growing teenage boy.

When she sneaks another look at him next to her, she’s disappointed to see the blank expression back on his face. She frowns, wishing she could reach forward and nitpick it away.

“What happened?”

He doesn’t bother to look at her, shrugging distantly. “Doesn’t matter, does it?”

“You got expelled, Lucas,” she says pointedly. A little miffed at his nonchalance over the whole scenario. “I think that matters a lot.”

“Look, if you wanted to tell me off, you could’ve saved your breath. My mama already did. Don’t need it from you, too.”

Riley is not a fan of the condescension in his tone. It goes along with all the other things that have been driving her crazy about him lately, like the constant scowl and the harsh jabs and the stupidly annoying eye rolls. Unlike every other idiosyncrasy he possesses, she’s decidedly not fond of these.

“You don’t have to be so mean,” she snaps, glaring at him as he sighs and pushes himself away from her.

She chews the inside of her cheek, debating whether or not she wants to get into this with him. For the few fights they’ve had since they were little, she rarely wins them, and she prefers to avoid them if she can. Not worth the risk of saying something they can’t come back from and losing him. But she feels like he’s never going to get out of this low point if someone doesn’t push him, and she doesn’t know if the Lucas she has now is the one she wants to keep close to her heart.

“You’ve been mean a lot lately,” she says, willing herself to be daring once again. If she can scale the tool shed outside, she can have a tough conversation with her best friend. “You’re all angry like, all the time.”

“Gee, thanks for pointing that out. Sure didn’t notice that.”

Riley scoffs. “Well, why are you being like that?”

“You think I want to?” he says defensively, turning his scowl on her and crossing his arms. For the first time, she notices the new band-aids on his knuckles that definitely weren’t there the day before. She has to wonder if they’re connected to the day’s events. “You think I like feeling like shit all the time?”

The language shocks her, making it hard to process the actual content of his words. She can’t fathom what terrifying things he’s experiencing in middle school to teach him words like that. “S-word.”

“Oh, stop,” he whines, waving her off and spinning away from her. He puts his hands to his head, pressing his knuckles against his temples. “Just stop.”

“You feel like it makes you cool to say words like that?” Riley feels some of her own anger building up inside of her, all the resentment she’s felt towards him and his changes threatening to spill out and burn them both like fire. “You think it’s cool to act like a jerk all the time? It’s not cool, Lucas. It’s lame. And it doesn’t make me like you very much.”

“What else am I supposed to do?” he snaps, whipping around to face her. Despite the frustrated scowl, what stands out most to Riley is the sudden desperation she sees in his eyes.

It’s even more stunning when they gloss over with tears—Lucas has been her best friend for almost a decade, and she can’t remember a moment she’s seen him cry.

“How else am I supposed to forget all of—?” He gestures vaguely to himself, attempting to visualize his anger in a tangible form. “This! How else am I supposed to get my dad to pay a speck of attention to me when all he likes to do is yell at me? Doing dumb stuff is the only way he seems to think I exist. And now I’m out of school and he still doesn’t care.”

Riley is at a loss for words, having pinched a nerve she wasn’t anticipating. Opening a can of worms she doesn’t know how to clean up. She feels a couple of tears sleep down her cheeks, wiping them hastily with the heel of her palm.

“Nobody cares!” Lucas shouts. Then he catches himself, glancing at his door in mild terror before backing off. His voice shrinks considerably. “Nobody cares.”

He falls on his butt in front of his window, slouching against the wall and staring at the bookshelf across from him. Anger gone, but no longer simply empty. She’s unlocked a completely new emotion for him, one he clearly never wanted to get to on his own.

Hurt.

Riley finds herself thinking back to Maya, all the things about her family she keeps hidden behind closed doors. She remembers being so grateful she’d never have to have such a bridge to gap with Lucas, being so thankful that she already knew absolutely everything about him because they were best friends and there was no way he could have stuff going on that she didn’t know about.

Somehow, she’s always proving herself more naïve than she believes she is. Because turns out Lucas has secrets of his own—big secrets, hidden right behind the closed doors of that white porch she’s spent so many hours on.

Part of her wishes she could take it back. Rewind the scene and make it so that she never ventures the question. She never uncovers this side to him, the parts of himself he wanted to keep away from her. Things stay simple. He promises to tell her his book orders and she smiles and climbs out the window and nothing between them changes.

But as Riley very well knows, everything is already changing. And it will continue to do so, whether she wants it to or not. She can either step up to the plate and hold onto the things she really loves regardless of how they shift in her grasp, or she can give up and let them go.

There is nothing she loves more in this world more than Lucas Friar.

She pushes herself to her feet, wandering over to join him by the window. She settles down across from him, wrapping her arms around her knees and holding her breath. Being there for him, letting him know she hears him.

“I don’t know why,” he says shakily, a tear escaping down his cheek. He wipes at it furiously, but it’s the drop before the downpour and he’s not going to put up much of a fight. “I don’t know why I’m angry. But it just won’t stop and I wish it would.”

Riley tilts her head, hoping he knows how deeply she cares for him. How much it hurts to see him like this, how much it has hurt to see him so upset for so long. That the tears she’s crying that mirror his own are entirely out of empathy for him, how she feels like she can feel his pain simply from how connected they are to each other.

“I just want everything to stop,” he exhales, pressing his palms to his eyes. “I don’t know who I am. I don’t want to become something mean. I feel like I already am. But I don’t know how to stop.”

“What?” Riley frowns, shaking her head. “No, you’re not.”

“I’m not a good person. I’m a bad person. He’s a bad person and I’m his son and I’m going to be a bad person too.”

“No,” she argues, continuing to shake her head adamantly. “Lucas, you are a good person. And we’re not even old enough to decide whether we’re good or bad people. We have so much time left in the world to figure out all that.”

Lucas huffs, only this time it’s more to catch his breath than a display of indignation.

“And even if you aren’t, that doesn’t matter. No one is perfect. What matters to me is that you’re one of my favorite people in the entire world, even at your angriest.” She resists the urge to reach forward and wipe the tear tracks from his cheeks, glancing instead at his chest and taking a different route. “You know why?”

He lifts his eyes to meet hers, exhaling harshly. “Why?”

“My mom—and you know, she’s very wise—she told me that all the stuff on the outside, none of that matters. What really defines a person is what’s inside, the content of your heart. And you, Lucas James Friar, have a beautiful heart.”

He makes a face at the word beautiful, but he maintains eye contact with her. Deeply invested in her explanation, even if he doesn’t quite buy it. “How do you know?”

“How do I know?” She scoffs, incredulous. “I’ve been your best friend forever. If I don’t know the content of your heart, who does?”

For a moment, the thought seems to comfort him. But that darkness creeps back up on him again, prompting another frown. “But what if it’s changed? I feel like everything about me is changing. I didn’t use to be this angry.”

He didn’t used to be this tall either, she muses. But she knows that was her mother’s entire point—regardless of how much else shifts around in their lives, the content of a heart stays the same. Lucas may be more troubled than she realized, but his heart is just as good and weird and pure as it was the day she met him.

“I didn’t use to be a Superklutz,” she says with a sigh, smiling tiredly. “You didn’t use to have those shiny black boots. It doesn’t matter. All that stuff can change indefinitely, but your heart is your heart. It stays the same no matter what.”

Riley reaches out her hand, aiming to feel his heartbeat but suddenly weirdly aware of how she is indeed a girl in his room. And while it’s never mattered before, it seems that being the opposite gender suddenly has more meaning and that touching his chest suddenly seems heavier than it used to when they were kids.

So she takes a detour, reaching forward to take his hands from his lap. She holds them in both of her own, adjusting her fingers so that her thumb is pressed to his wrist. Lucas watches her timidly, breathing still shallow from crying.

Lightly applying pressure, she waits for a moment to find his pulse, smiling when the rhythm of his heart pounds against her fingertip.

“Yep,” she says, lifting her head to meet his gaze. “Still good.”

He heaves out a sigh, laughing in spite of himself even though nothing is funny. She feels another sensation run through her veins, but this one is more familiar and much more satisfying than adrenaline. It’s fondness, and she’s been addicted to it for as long as she’s known him.

Lucky for her, she’ll never have to live without it. She focuses on his pulse, squeezing his wrist affectionately.

“Still the best friend I love.”


	4. thirteen ( lucas )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _And most days I pretend  
>  That he’s just a friend,  
> He’s just a friend.  
> Yeah, I’ll try to make our hearts beat in time,  
> Even though your rhythm might not be with mine..._
> 
> \-- Sabrina Carpenter, "Darling I'm A Mess"

Although it seemed like the end of the world at the time, when Lucas finally heads to middle school for his second chance he’s actually pretty glad he got expelled.

Not for the criminal nature of it all, of course, but more so because his closest friends are in the grade below him and now he gets to stay on the same track as them. He has classes with Zay, he sees Riley in the halls again, and he’ll get to graduate with his favorite people rather than head off into the world alone.

Even still, the event does cause him to reevaluate his perspective. He’s spent enough time being angry over his dad, desperately trying to get his attention. He’s wasted enough energy attempting to please people who will never be satisfied with him, and he’s tired of screaming to be heard when he knows he’s probably better off keeping his mouth shut anyway.

So he decides to make a change. He cuts out the stupid behavior, a bit to Zay’s dismay. He tries to focus on the positive things in life, making a concerted effort to exert all the negative energy into baseball and conserve the good energy for the people who deserve it.

It’s inarguable which person in his life deserves the most of it.

Lucas wonders if Riley will ever know how much her friendship has held him together in the last couple of years—how important it’s been since she moved across the street all those years ago. She’s the first to comment on his more mellow demeanor, but makes him promise not to feel like he can’t talk just as much as usual around her. Sometimes when she goes to the library, she’ll pick him up books she thinks he’ll like even though he’s long past his grounding sentence.

As his last criminal act, the day he’s freed from his punishment he convinces Maya to go to the library with him and steals the encyclopedia on horses. He knows it’s wrong, but it means more to him than anyone could possibly understand and besides, he’s got to be the only person in suburban Philadelphia who cares enough about horses to read it cover to cover.

Maya shows him her steal the moment they escape undiscovered, pulling the paperback from underneath her home-made tie-dye shirt. It’s ancient-looking and a little crusty, but she defends it on the basis that she saw Josh reading it earlier in the summer and it was easy enough to sneak out.

More drastic than the shift from elementary is the new friends their group adds as they make their way through the hallowed halls of John Quincy Adams middle school.

Halfway through seventh grade, Lucas gains in a new next door neighbor in the form of Isadora Smackle. She’s petite and bespectacled and doesn’t let him get too close the couple of times Riley drags him over to welcome her to the neighborhood, but she seems nice enough and his best friend is determined to reel her in.

As it turns out, Lucas is more instrumental in this endeavor than he realizes. It’s pretty evident Smackle finds him cute—or at least, so Riley tells him—so she instructs him to turn on the charm when she’s around so she’ll ease into being more comfortable with their group. He doesn’t see how she could possibly tell when someone finds someone else cute, but he doesn’t get much of a chance to question her before she pushes him into the fray each time.

“Here she comes,” Riley says eagerly, tossing her French braid over her shoulder to eye Smackle as she makes her way through the cafeteria uncertainly. She gives him an expectant look, wiggling her shoulders excitedly. “Lucas, go invite her to come sit with us.”

“Why don’t you do it? I think you’d be a lot more convincing than me.”

Riley rolls her eyes, pushing herself to her feet and rounding the table to join him. She leans over his shoulder, picking a French fry off his tray. When she continues, her voice is right in his ear and her breath tickles.

“Lucas, haven’t we learned it’s not smart to question your best friend when her intentions are pure? Don’t I know what I’m talking about?”

“Fifty-fifty chance,” Maya says realistically, smirking at her. Zay high fives her.

Riley crinkles her nose, obviously not amused. Lucas’s stomach clenches right on cue.

She pulls at his arm until he climbs up from his seat, groaning in annoyance at her insistence. He glances over the top of her head as Smackle continues to scan for a safe place to enjoy her lunch. “Don’t you think if she wanted to be our friend, she would’ve done it by now?”

“Some people take more work than others,” she says wisely, scrutinizing him. She reaches forward without any hesitation and takes the hem of his t-shirt, tucking it into his jeans.

The feeling of her naturally cold fingers against the skin of his hips is something he’s not remotely prepared for. He’s somewhat stunned that she can manhandle him so casually, but considering they’ve been friends their entire lives maybe he shouldn’t be. Maybe him suddenly thinking it’s a big deal is the weird part.

More confusingly, he’s wigged out over the fact that he kind of likes the new type of contact. He forces the thought out of his mind, scowling at her. “What are you doing?”

“Normal people either tuck their shirt in all the way or not at all,” she says matter-of-factly, finishing his half-tuck job and shifting her critical gaze to his face. She licks her thumb, attempting to flatten one of the stray pieces of hair on his forehead.

He darts out of her way, just as Smackle makes her journey through their row of tables.

“Here she comes.” Riley grabs his shoulder, standing on her tip-toes to whisper in his ear. “Go get her, cowboy. Rope her in.”

“Riles, he lived in Texas for four years. He’s not a cowboy.”

She shushes Maya, giving Lucas an encouraging smile before shoving him into the bullpen. Counting on him with the same amount of belief she’s always had in him, the unwavering faith that he can do anything he sets his mind to.

As it turns out, Riley’s misplaced belief in him is well-spotted in this scenario. Smackle joins their lunch table for good by the end of the year, and before long becomes a regular character in their neighborhood hangouts.

Riley’s reward for his hard work is a kiss on the cheek. He pretends to be grossed out by it, but the way his cheek seems to tingle from where her lips brushed it tells a different story. The amount of time he spends thinking about it and her cold hands on his skin doesn’t help his argument either.

Another Adams Street summer has Josh teach him and Zay how to skateboard, seemingly a real expert in his Vans and black beanie that he hasn’t taken off since he got it at the beginning of the new year. Riley and Maya decide they want to be professional photographers like her uncle Shawn, taking pictures of everything in sight and claiming it’s an artistic masterpiece. Unsurprisingly, Maya gives up on it pretty quickly, dropping it for the next artsy hobby. But Riley holds onto the interest, convincing Lucas to take walks with her so she can get some new photos and taking more than enough of him.

He hates having his photo taken, but she insists that he’s instrumental to her creative process. She calls him her “muse,” saying the term with arrogant flair as if that alone should be a good enough reason for him to put down his walls and be her test subject.

It is a pretty good reason. Being Riley’s _anything_ is an alluring prospect these days, and he’s always had an impossibly hard time saying no to her.

He continues to grow, grateful to always maintain at least a couple of inches over Riley despite how quickly she seems to be growing as well. Zay decides to try a Mohawk for eighth grade, pulling it off better than Lucas knows he ever could. Apparently inspired by his stint, Maya decides to dye her hair a vibrant shade of hot pink.

He doesn’t know what went wrong exactly, but it comes out looking more like cotton candy than the vivid magenta she was going for originally. Riley assures her it looks great, and in confidence she explains to Lucas that she’s actually grateful they didn’t mix it right and it came out softer than intended.

Riley isn’t a fan of change, and he knows this about her. He knows everything about her, she’s his best friend, and that’s why he keeps the shifting nature of his feelings for her a secret. No use risking something so important, changing something that works so well.

In a lot of ways, it sort of feels like a secret from himself as well. Although he’s starting to figure out what those stomach clenches mean, why his palms get sweaty whenever Riley gets too close to him, he doesn’t want to admit it to himself. For so long she’s just been Riley, the girl across the street. His best friend who he loves.

The word love suddenly makes him feel sick, much like it did when he was eight. Only now it’s not because the concept itself seems too disturbing to even fathom, it’s because he gets the sinking feeling that it’s gaining an even deeper meaning than before. Becoming more and more true the longer he lays awake at night haunted by her icy fingers and crinkling nose and unwavering belief in him.

Growing up ruins everything.

* * *

Eighth grade Riley’s latest obsession is theater, and she throws herself into it with everything she has in her. Maya joins her at first and innately loses interest within a couple weeks, but she manages to keep Zay roped into it with his love of dance. It’s through middle school drama that they meet Farkle Minkus, a rich kid from the other side of the school zone with a mop top of brown hair and more self-confidence than Lucas thinks the rest of them have combined.

He finds it a little hard to warm up to him at first. Farkle comes from inconceivable wealth, and Lucas can barely afford new shoes when the old ones wear out. He wore his sneakers until the soles were practically peeling off, and he’s been wearing the black boots they bought to replace them ever since. Maya and Zay make fun of him for it, picking on him for his limited fashion sense, and he laughs along because it feels easier than explaining his dad got laid off from the accounting firm and they’re pinching pennies just to be able to pay the mortgage on the house he’s lived in for the last ten years.

The only person who seems to get it without any prompting is Smackle. He doesn’t remember how it happens, but they find themselves alone on his front porch one day and she questions him bluntly about the status of his family’s finances. Before they know it, they’re talking about their living situations in comparison to the rather cushy home lives of Zay and Riley and how hard it is to talk about it, because it’s so much easier just to not talk at all.

Lucas decides all the pursuit of Smackle in seventh grade was worth it. From that point on, they share an unspoken bond.

The other aspect of Farkle Minkus that is hard to swallow is the sheer volume of his personality. It’s no wonder he’s in the theater program, as he always has something to say about everything and isn’t afraid to assert his opinion on whoever is within earshot. It’s annoying to anyone just trying to enjoy some peace and quiet with friends, but it makes him perfect for projecting lines into their dusty middle school auditorium.

Lucas’s overall disdain for theater dissipates the moment Riley is casted in their upcoming production of _Romeo & Juliet_. The excitement on her face when she discovers her role as Juliet is so cute, so joyous, so worth whatever annoying characters come along with it.

An unintended side effect is the amount of time between their friend group that is suddenly dedicated to play practice. Most afternoons after school are spent sitting around the Matthews living room, watching with a paradoxical mix of amusement and boredom as Riley, Zay, and Farkle practice their scenes.

Farkle stomps forward in front of the coffee table, puffing his chest out and holding his script out in front of him. “ _You shall find me apt enough to that, sir, and you will give me occasion_!”

“ _Could you not take some occasion without giving_?” Zay inquires, raising his eyebrows at Farkle over the top of his booklet. Although his friend is arguably the best actor between the two of them, even he is pretty awful.

“ _Mercutio, thou consort'st with Romeo—_ ,”

“Consort’st?” Maya repeats in amusement, twirling a piece of her cotton candy hair in her fingers. It’s started to fade from the roots, leaving the top half her natural blonde and the bottom pink, like some strange fruit. “Like, get with? Is Mercutio gay?”

“No—,” Farkle starts.

“Hell yeah,” Zay interrupts. “I’m gonna consort with Romeo all night long.”

Smackle pushes her glasses up her nose, speaking up from her spot on Lucas’s right. “Consort does have the connotation of romantic entanglement, but the dated use of the word for Shakespeare’s purposes does not have such an intention.”

“Thank you, Isadora.”

Smackle blushes at Farkle’s expression of gratitude, dipping her head down and smiling to herself.

“Look, will you two hurry up and get through this scene so we can get to mine?” Riley says anxiously. She’s been pacing in front of the fireplace for half an hour, painstakingly mouthing her lines to herself while Farkle and Zay butcher the rest of the script.

“It’s not my fault Zay is overacting.”

“Me? Overacting!” Zay scoffs, sticking his thumb between his teeth. “I bite my thumb at you, sir.”

Lucas slouches further into the couch cushions as they continue to argue, further delaying their actual rehearsal of the scene. Smackle lowers herself slightly to reach his level, venturing a whisper.

“This is somewhat of a waste of time, is it not?”

“Somewhat?” Maya scoffs, adjusting from her perch on the elbow of the couch. She props her elbow on Lucas’s shoulder, frowning at her nails in a bored fashion. He can’t help but notice how different it feels to be physically close to her and Smackle and not feel a thing one way or the other—he’s pretty sure if Riley propped her elbow on his shoulder, he’d spontaneously combust. “Remember when we used to actually do fun things when we hung out together? Remember when we’d like, exist as friends with lives?”

“We never had lives,” Lucas comments flatly.

Maya makes a face at him, nudging his head to the side dismissively. “More than we do now.”

Noise swells from the guest room down the hall, alternative music that grows perceptibly louder as the door swings open. Josh emerges and passes by the living room, poking his head in and raising his eyebrows at them.

“Everything going okay in here? Rugrats behaving themselves?”

Lucas notes how quickly Maya removes herself from any form of visible physical contact with him the moment Josh appears in the doorway. He resists the urge to laugh.

“Just because you’re babysitting us does not mean we’re babies,” Riley says defensively, giving her uncle an irritated look. “We’re thirteen.”

“Fourteen,” Zay corrects, pointing in the direction of Lucas and Maya.

“Infants, each and every one of you,” Josh says offhandedly, waving them off and floating off to the kitchen.

Maya hops to her feet, adjusting her ripped jean shorts by tugging fretfully at the hems. “I think I’m going to get something to drink,” she explains, fixing her hair absentmindedly and marching after Josh.

Although he knows she’s attempting to get the chance to talk to him alone, Lucas realizes the kitchen is the perfect temporary escape from play practice hell and decides to take advantage of it as well. Ruining a little bit of Maya’s fun is always a bonus.

“I’m gonna grab something too,” he says, rising and raising an eyebrow at Smackle. “Want anything?”

Her gaze is fixated on Farkle, not even tossing him a glance. “I’m content. Thanks.”

Lucas smirks, shaking his head to himself as he slinks his way to the kitchen as inconspicuously as possible. Although he has no idea what she sees in Farkle Minkus, he’s fine with her affections being directed towards their new, abrasive friend.

Maya is already conversing with Josh when he joins them, clearly trying to maintain his attention as he rummages through the fridge.

“I totally get what you mean,” she says enthusiastically, batting her eyelashes. The gesture seems so out of character for Maya, who spends more time rolling her eyes at him than trying to be charming.

He also notices the amount of eyeliner she’s been sporting recently, presumably in an attempt to look older than she actually is. As Zay puts it, Lucas thinks it looks more raccoon-like than mature. But he figures Maya has to work that out for herself.

“I found it so interesting. So illuminating about the human condition.”

Lucas has never heard such eloquent analysis come out of Maya’s mouth about anything except perhaps when they went to Paco’s Tacos for their anniversary tacopalooza. He doesn’t even know what she’s referring to, but it sounds like a Spark Notes entry in audio format.

“What are you talking about?”

Josh surfaces from the fridge, smiling warmly when he spots Lucas. Although he doesn’t rely on his approval nearly as much as Maya does, Lucas has always thought of Riley’s uncle like an older brother and always feels a little proud to be so welcomed in his presence.

“We were just talking about _Brave New World_ ,” Josh explains, filling him in. “By Aldous Huxley? Maya was just saying she read it last summer.”

Lucas vaguely remembers the title from the book Maya stole from the library. He furrows his brow, giving Maya a questioning look. “You told me you hated that thing. You said you couldn’t get through the first five pages.”

“No I did not,” Maya hisses, shooting him a glare before returning her sweet smile to Josh. “I will admit it was a little hard to get into, but after that? I mean, what can you say?”

“You? Probably not a lot,” Lucas mutters, disappearing behind the fridge door before Maya can kill him.

“Hey, it’s whatever. I totally get that Huxley isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But when you’ve got time to kill lazing around watching after your niece and her girl scout troop in the living room…”

“Yeah,” Lucas says, pulling a juice box from the fridge. He knows they’re more for Auggie than any of them, but Riley still finds them delicious and Lucas finds that incredibly endearing, so for whatever reason he likes them too. He fiddles with the straw, sticking it into the hole in the top. “Why do you offer to babysit so much? Does Cory really think we need to be watched?”

“We _are_ fourteen,” Maya reiterates, but it’s clear to Lucas she’s not speaking for both of them. With how intently she’s eyeing Josh, he’s not sure she’s repeating the sentiment to emphasize their ability to take care of themselves.

“It’s babysitter code never to reveal to the babies the reasoning behind their sitting,” Josh says vaguely, giving both of them a mysterious smirk. Then he shrugs, the cryptic aura fading away. “Mostly it’s just good money. Boy’s gotta make a buck or two somehow, and none of the places downtown are hiring.”

Maya makes a face, her tone playful. “What do you need money for? Got more pretentious books to buy?”

“Well, sure. But there are also lots of girls in the junior class interested in the Josh Matthews experience, and dates don’t come cheap.”

Lucas tries to ignore the way Maya’s face falls. He doesn’t know how to comfort her, and he’s not sure she’d take it even if he knew how. But he also doesn’t know who she’s kidding—Josh is three years their senior and much cooler than any of them combined. If Lucas has to be realistic about where he stands with Riley, Maya has to swallow the same medicine.

“Excuse me,” she says confidently enough, sliding her way past him and heading back to the living room. Josh hardly notices her exit, searching the cabinet for some crackers to go with the cheese he retrieved from the fridge.

“So,” Lucas says curiously, hoping he comes off casual like Josh and not as dorky as he knows he is. “A date?”

Josh rolls up the sleeves of his flannel, giving Lucas a smirk as he starts prepping some slices for himself. “That’s what I said. Sophie Miller is a pretty tough sell, but after tonight I think I’m going to win her over. She agreed to go out, and that’s the first step, right?”

Lucas nods, as if he has any idea what Josh is talking about. As if he’s well-studied in the content of a date and the rules of the romantic world he doesn’t want to step foot in as it is. Considering the person he’d want to explore it with is decidedly off limits and uninterested, it doesn’t seem like it’s worth the effort.

Still, he can’t help but be curious.

“Look, between you and me, dates are kind of bogus.” Josh pops a piece of Havarti into his mouth, hesitating before continuing. “It’s just society’s way of putting relationships through this cookie cutter mold to make sure everyone experiences the same indoctrination into the world of romantic association. But like, if you have an actual connection with someone, then it isn’t that big of a deal.”

Lucas only comprehends about half of the words that come out of his mouth. “Oh, totally.”

“Why so curious?” Josh raises an eyebrow at him, a knowing gleam twinkling in his eyes. It’s the same one Riley gives him that makes him feel completely out of the loop. Maybe it’s a Matthews family trait. “Got a girl you’re thinking about courting?”

“Huh? No. No, I wasn’t—,”

Josh turns to face him, giving him his undivided attention. But the entertained smirk on his face makes it feel less supportive than he’s going for. “Come on. You don’t have a girl over there in the eighth grade that you can’t stop thinking about? You have that stomachache yet?”

Lucas’s eyes widen at the last question, wondering how on Earth Josh could possibly know about the stomach clenches. He’s about to brave the awkwardness and ask him how he’s supposed to cure it, like if he needs medication or something, when Riley storms into the kitchen and interrupts.

She sighs when she locks eyes with him, tilting her head in exasperation. “There you are. You disappeared like forever ago.”

“Sorry to borrow him,” Josh says, raising his hands in surrender. “Important guy things to discuss. You know how it is.”

Riley rolls her eyes, marching over. She takes Lucas by the hand, leading him out of the kitchen. “Come on.”

Lucas glances over his shoulder at Josh, catching one last grin cross his lips before Riley tugs him out of sight. She takes him not to the living room but rather to the stairs, leading the way up.

“Where are we going?”

“Farkle and Zay are never going to finish that scene and I really need to practice.” As if to accent her point, Farkle yells something from the living room that is neither child-friendly or evidently Shakespearian. Riley rolls her eyes. “I have to get these line down and I need quiet to do it.”

The last thing Lucas hears is Zay boldly deliver one of his lines before Riley nudges him into her bedroom, shutting the door behind them and drowning out the ruckus.

It’s not as if he’s never been in her room before, but he’s always a bit surprised by how much it’s likely to transform by the year. Whereas his bedroom feels frozen in time, ordinary in every way, Riley’s is full of personal touches and feels like her the moment you step into the space. Although he doesn’t spend much time in it at Cory’s insistence, it’s one of his favorite places. He never feels more at ease than when he’s in her room.

Seeing as she’s his favorite person, it’s not a surprise.

“So what am I here for?”

She hands him her copy of the script, already open to the right page number. “I need a scene partner, obviously. And you can use my copy, because I’m trying to get off book so this will be a good test.”

“I’m not an actor,” he warns her.

She laughs, waving him off. “You don’t have to act. Just read the lines. I’ll handle the performance, thank you very much.”

“Okay.” He settles down on the edge of her bed, skimming the open pages and trying to get a read on the storyline. If Riley’s knowing smirk makes him feel dim, then trying to read Shakespeare makes him feel like a downright idiot. But he’s doing it for her, so he’ll try his best. “Where are we starting?”

She doesn’t answer immediately, causing him to look up from the play. She’s examining him thoughtfully, fingers nervously fiddling with the hem of her blouse. It’s the red one with the floral pattern, and while he thinks he likes her most in purple he can’t deny red is a good color on her.

He internally slaps his own wrist, reminding himself he’s not supposed to be thinking that way about her. Best friends can compliment one another’s appearance, sure, but not with the same stomachache he’s got right now.

“Actually, I changed my mind.” She approaches him, taking the script from his hands and flipping through it. “I was going to have you help me with the scene I have with Tybalt—Farkle—but I actually think you’d be more helpful with this one.”

She hands him the script, now flipped to what the Roman numerals tell him is act one, scene five. Starting at the top of the page, he scans for the other role in the scene with Riley’s Juliet.

“Romeo?” He says in surprise, lifting his eyes to meet hers. “You want me to be Romeo?”

“Wherefore art thou,” she says with a nervous laugh. When he doesn’t react to the reference she moves past it, twisting her fingers together and beginning to pace. “It’s just, this is a really important scene and we haven’t gotten to it at rehearsals yet. It’s the only one I don’t feel ready for, and I really want to work through it with someone I trust.”

Just glancing at the pages, he doesn’t see what’s so special about it. “How come?”

“Well, it’s—,” she starts, struggling with how to articulate the details. When their eyes meet again, she offers him a shy smile. “It’s the first kiss.”

Lucas feels the floor drop out from under him. He doesn’t see how he’s going to be able to hold her script without dropping it the way his palms are beginning to sweat.

“Kiss?”

“I know it’s like a lot, but I’m all nervous about it because well, I haven’t had my first yet. And I know it’s just acting, and that the sanctity of a first anything is merely a social construct and all that—,”

He can practically hear Topanga echoing through her words as she rambles. He’s amazed he can comprehend her at all considering how fast she’s talking and how hard his heart is pounding in his ears.

“But I don’t want to go into the situation with no experience at all and embarrass myself. And I have to get it over with sometime, but I want it to be with someone I trust.” She grins at him, pleading with him through her wide eyes. “And well, who do I love and trust more than my best friend?”

Considering he’s never kissed anybody either, he doesn’t see how he’s going to be much service to her as far as practice. But he does want to help her anyway he can, and is he truly in all honesty going to pass up the chance to kiss Riley Matthews when she’s giving him absolute permission? Especially with it being acting, and everything, there’s no risk of things falling apart if it goes wrong.

“Uh, okay,” he agrees, clearing his throat when his voice cracks. He nods, straightening up and trying to come off as self-assured. “Okay, sure.”

Her eyes light up. “Really? Are you sure?”

“What are best friends for?” He says with a shrug, focusing back down on the script. “I’m sure I owe you a favor from somewhere down the line. Just the lines, yeah?”

“Right, yes,” she says eagerly, bouncing on the balls of her feet. She nods to him. “You start. There at the top of the page.”

“Okay.” He takes a deep breath, reading the lines carefully before he starts so he doesn’t sound like a complete loser when he states them without any idea what they’re actually trying to say. “If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle fine is this—,”

“No, no,” she says, holding back a laugh. She shakes her head, wandering over to him and taking his arm. “Not like that.”

“What?” He allows her to yank him to his feet, following her guidance as she leads him to the center of the room. “You told me to read it.”

“Okay, yes, read it, but have like, a _little_ bit of emotion!” She giggles, crossing her arms. “How am I, an actress, supposed to play off of you if you’re not giving me anything to work with?”

“I told you, I’m not an actor. I don’t even know what any of this means.”

She gives him a look, tilting her head. “I know for a fact that you’ve felt emotions before. Even if you don’t know what exactly is happening in the scene, I’m sure you know enough about the show in general and have experienced enough emotion in your own life to put _something_ to the lines.”

Lucas contemplates, chewing the inside of his cheek. Glancing at her, he muses over how nice her hair looks in the afternoon sun filtering in through the window, a couple of pieces braided back out of her face. He appreciates how wholesome she looks without the same kind of make-up routine as Maya, although he’s pretty sure even if she did have raccoon eyes he would find them just as charming. He ruminates over the fact that he has to internalize all of this for the rest of his life, fighting a stomachache and continuing to love her as much as he always has only with conditions attached.

He doesn’t know what this Romeo guy’s deal is or why he thought dying was a good idea, but he realizes he can sympathize with his romantic situation. It really, truly sucks having feelings for someone you’re not supposed to have them for.

“ _If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle fine is this,_ ” he begins again, channeling some of that repressed emotion into the delivery. He glances up to check for Riley’s reaction, relieved to see a pleased smile on her face. “ _My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss._ ”

He doesn’t know how anybody can be an actor—just saying those few lines makes his cheeks flush and he feels more self-conscious than ever. But Riley doesn’t give him much time to dwell on it, leaping into the scene with high energy and a near instantaneous dedication to character.

“ _Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much_ ,” she says breathlessly, reaching forward and taking his hand in hers. He locks eyes with her, captivated by how intently she’s delivering her lines as if he’s an audience worth impressing. As if he’s not going to love her regardless. “ _Which mannerly devotion shows in this; for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss_.”

Lucas has no idea what the hell she just said, but he believes every word of it. He’s so caught up in her performance he momentarily forgets he’s supposed to be playing along, clearing his throat and breaking eye contact to check the script.

“ _Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?_ ”

“ _Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer._ ”

“ _O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do_ ,” Lucas recites, swallowing nervously. He hopes she doesn’t notice his hands trembling, gripping the script tightly to keep it from shaking. “ _They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair_.”

Riley’s eyes haven’t left his face since the moment they started the scene. She speaks softly now, pouring emotion into her performance. “ _Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake._ ”

Lucas has no idea who Romeo and Juliet are. Even though it feels like they’re speaking a different language, it feels like Riley is talking right to him, like whatever emotion they’re supposed to be emulating isn’t so much acting but something they’re attempting to share with one another without knowing the right words. That’s the only reason he can produce that explains why his heart is beating so hard.

She’s still holding his hand. He wonders if she can feel his pulse through his wrist, like she does every now and then. He wonders if she’s judging him, or if her heart is beating the same way.

“ _Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take._ ”

From what he can tell, he still has another line, so it’s a surprise when Riley stands on her tip-toes and presses their lips together.

She stumbles slightly and falls back onto her heels, Lucas dipping his head slightly to keep their mouths together. Her grip on his hand tightens. He’s still a bit self-conscious, and he’s fairly certain it must be obvious that he has no clue what he’s doing.

It’s over before he can even process exactly what happened. But Riley continues to operate by her own agenda, taking a deep breath and curiously venturing another kiss without opening her eyes.

This one is slower than the first, but equally unexpected. Lucas drops the script, hands shaking too hard to hold it properly and not caring so much all the sudden anyway.

With the second chance he’s given more opportunity to focus on what’s actually happening in the moment—how cold Riley’s fingers are around his wrist, how soft her lips are, how she tastes like grapefruit from that chap stick she carries around in her backpack.

Tentatively, Lucas brings his hand to her shoulder, brushing some of her hair to the side and lightly touching the crook of her neck. He can’t help but think how he’d like a third chance, and a fourth, how even though he has no idea what he’s doing it’s not at all nerve-wracking with her.

Because it’s Riley, it’s his best friend, and he never feels more at ease than when he’s with her.

But that’s not who they are. They’re best friends—that’s all they are—and he knows this better than anybody.

The rest of it all is just practice.

Riley breaks first, exhaling uncertainly and dipping her head down to look at their feet. He wishes her could read her mind, and considering how often he feels like he already does it seems like a rather simple wish the universe could grant.

Finally, she lifts her eyes to meet his. She exhales again, smiling shyly.

“You kiss by the book.”

That’s definitely not what he was expecting. “Huh?”

She blinks at him, slowly realizing he’s far from mentally in the scene. Her smile widens and she breaks into a laugh, pushing her hair behind her ear nervously. “It’s from the play. The next line. I think. If we—,”

She scans the floor around them, attempting to locate the script. Lucas drops to his knees to grab it, embarrassed and likely blushing up to his ears. He finds the page again and squints at it, showing it to her to confirm her suspicions.

“Looks like it was my line still.”

“Oh.” She chews her lip. “Guess I have some more rehearsing to do, huh?”

* * *

For as much as he tells himself not to, Lucas finds it much harder to hold Riley in the realm of just friendship in his mind from then onward. In some crazy, deluded moments, he feels like maybe she’s thinking the same thing, like when he turns around in math to find her staring at him or when they share a content moment of silence during their walk back from school.

From how much he obsesses over it at night when he’s trying to fall asleep to how much he finds himself dreaming about it when he finally does, the kiss haunts Lucas like a very captivating ghost.

By the time opening night rolls around and he’s waiting outside the stage doors with Maya, Smackle, and the Matthews with flowers for her, he somehow convinces himself that maybe things could be more than they are between them. That maybe play practice wasn’t the first and last kiss he would ever get to share with Riley Matthews.

It’s a tender shock to discover a showmance has bloomed in his absence from rehearsal, Riley eagerly telling Maya that her onstage Romeo, Charlie Gardner, is now her very real offstage boyfriend.

Her very first boyfriend.

Despite the throat ache that replaces the stomachache he had before the curtain rose, he gives Riley the flowers and a tight hug when she finally makes the rounds to him. Assuring her he’s proud of her, like he always is. Knowing that this is the way they are, the way they’ve always been.

Nothing is going to change that. Whether he wants it to or not.


	5. fifteen ( lucas )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This dream isn’t feeling sweet,  
>  We’re reeling through the midnight streets,  
> And I’ve never felt more alone  
> It feels so scary, getting old._
> 
> \-- Lorde, "Ribs"

Distracted with the jump into high school and desperately trying to ignore the reality of Riley’s updated relationship status, Lucas doesn’t realize how delicately the two of them drift apart until it’s already happened.

All things considered, he doesn’t think it’s because of Charlie alone. No, there are plenty of other factors that play a role in slowly wedging them apart. High school is overwhelming, and it’s enough of a task to keep yourself from getting massacred, let alone maintain every relationship exactly as you left it. Both of them dive deeper into their respective interests, Riley eating up her afternoons with theater and newspaper while he channels his energy into junior varsity baseball and environmental club.

Boys and girls seem to separate on their own anyway. Whereas in elementary school the choice was deliberate, the exclusion these days seems to be instinctual. Unless there is a valid reason—such as, for example, to woo one of the opposite gender on the other side of party lines—his classmates seem to do a bang up job of isolating themselves.

Zay is particularly apt at pointing out the ridiculousness of the situation, considering his new understanding of his sexuality. Being bisexual and interested in both girls and guys, Zay acts as though he has a special pass across the line and boasts it every chance he can get. At least, he does so around Lucas, one of the few people he’s actually shared this new identity with.

“Way people are acting, you’d think they all still believe in cooties,” he says one day during lunch, taking a bite of Lucas’s cookie before proceeding to spit it out all over his tray. “Does this have raisins in it? Warn a guy, man!”

For what it’s worth, Lucas isn’t sure that particular statement is true. Sure, in the hallways at school the gender lines are pretty clear, but his classmates are spending more than enough time exploring one another when they’re off the clock. All it takes is two minutes in the locker room before gym to catch up on who is kissing who or who _wants_ to be kissing who.

Lucas doesn’t know why girls get the reputation for being gossips, when he’s never seen personal information spread faster than in the boy’s locker room at John Adams High School.

For the most part, he keeps his mouth shut. Because he’s never been one for drama, and talking about other people’s emotions and secrets feels treacherous in some way. Because there are secrets of his own he’s trying to keep deeply under wraps, feelings he’s done a fairly good job of stifling and ignoring during school hours that he’d rather not see travel through the John Adams gossip chain. Feelings that if he brought them up in the John Adams locker room he’d have a lot to answer for, especially from the guy currently dating the subject of said feelings who happens to share gym class with him.

If he could have it his way, he’d keep his ears shut too. Charlie is a gentleman and doesn’t say much, he’ll give him that, but the very mention of what he and Riley may be doing together during these locker room conversations is enough to make him want to rush out onto the field and do wind sprints until he pukes. Or passes out. Either one would work.

Otherwise, it’s relatively easy to tune out their relationship and thus effectively tune out his own malcontent. The unfortunate side effect is how it contributes to the constant drift of his and Riley’s friendship, one he used to call his best but no longer feels like it. The friendship he was so desperate not to change.

The worst moments are the unexpected reminders. The nights where he goes to take the garbage out and happens to catch Charlie’s mom dropping Riley off for the evening. He stands like an idiot in his hand-me-down baseball tee and backwards cap, trash bag in hand while dashing, well-groomed Charlie Gardner of Quincy Manors walks his best friend to her door like a gentleman.

He leans in to give her a light kiss, and even all the way across the street Lucas can see the blush crawl up her cheeks. They exchange one more tight hug before Charlie jogs back to the car, Riley watching him from the porch steps.

It isn’t until the Gardner vehicle pulls out of the neighborhood that Riley notices him frozen across the street. The two of them lock eyes, an effortless smile crossing her lips as she raises her hand in a timid wave.

He waves back, mirroring her smile without even trying. Partially because he’s embarrassed to be caught staring at them moodily from the curb, but also because it’s Riley. The natural response with her is the ease of that smile. It always has been and likely always will be, no matter who she chooses to date or how long it’s been since they had a real conversation.

Still, the little green monster inside of him that used to be reserved for how much Zay’s parents pay attention to him or how Farkle can afford literally anything his heart desires suddenly takes up a larger and much nastier presence in his chest. He never lets it speak for him, but it motivates him to do some stupid things he likely would not have chosen to without its influence.

One of the most glaring and relevant examples of this is Missy Bradford, student council member and rich darling of Quincy Manors.

He doesn’t remember how exactly he got wind of her feelings for him. Part of him knows Farkle had something to do with it, considering they’re neighbors and used to be friends before she discovered Instagram and he stop combing his hair to wealthy perfection. They’d drifted due to their changing personalities and differing interests, the original bond of their childhood friendship not nearly enough to keep them together.

Realistically though, he’s pretty sure it was Smackle who let the cat out of the bag. She’d confirmed his suspicions based on Farkle’s commentary with a blatant complaint of her own.

“Please, she absolutely will not stop chattering about you,” she explains, pointing out that the gossip of the girl’s room does its best to keep up with the boys. “Every time I’m simply attempting to change into my shorts I have to stomach her fanatic musings about how beautiful your eyes are or how much working out you must do to obtain such a perfect tan.”

“I don’t know about beautiful.”

“Listen, I’ve tried to set them straight.” She pushes her spectacles up her nose, shrugging pointedly. “I’ve attempted to explain that you’re nothing more than an average, somewhat awkward adolescent boy with a horse obsession and a good mix of genetics that you did nothing to earn.”

“Gee, thanks.”

She lets out a disdainful sigh. “She was not interested in such enlightenment. She’s decided that you are the one for her, and if I were you I’d keep a careful eye out. Missy does not seem like one to give up easily on what she wants.”

Lucas thinks about taking her advice, but another curbside showing of the Riley and Charlie parade—this time with an encore kiss—activates the bad decision-making.

He wonders why Missy has to chase after him when he isn’t exactly looking for anybody else? Why not make it easy for her? It’s almost like a good deed to battle the negativity of the jealousy, isn’t it?

It’s all those instigators that send him her way the night of the ninth grade spring formal, initiating an on and off kissing arrangement he carries with him for the rest of the year. An arrangement that certainly serves a purpose to both of them, but that he’s not sure either of them can back away from unscathed.

On the one hand, it is good practice that he knows is probably going to do him some good in the future one way or another. And it certainly isn’t a terrible pastime, but he doesn’t get the hype that his classmates laud on the experiences as if their lives depend on it in the locker room. Aside from the useful firsthand skill, he doesn’t feel any different with or without it.

From what he understands, most people do not predominantly refer to such experimentation at this phase of their lives as “useful.”

Yet it’s not exactly a mystery why he isn’t jumping on the bandwagon like the rest of his classmates seem to be. It’s because his heart’s not in it, and as nice as the kissing feels from an objective standpoint it leaves him empty and hollow when all is said and done.

His heart is in the fumbling Shakespearian first kiss that still haunts him months, years later. His heart is in the fleeting touches and whispers in his ears and fingertips grazing his hip when tucking in his relentlessly half-tucked shirt. No matter how many times he shoves the thoughts away or how many ways Missy’s impatient hands find his skin, it’s always going to be with the ghosts keeping him awake at night with the imprint of what could have been.

His heart is always going to be safely with Riley across the street, regardless of how many invisible miles seem to stretch between them in the meantime.

* * *

Despite the inner turmoil, the first half of high school is not a complete bust.

In the absence of his best friend and the gaping chasm she seems to leave behind, Lucas makes a surprising amount of new friends. Many of them are new with the change in schools, such as his lab partner Nigel Chey or his new baseball teammates. He forms a fast friendship with Billy Ross, the local JV superstar and impressive batter, but Dave Williams becomes one of his very favorite people. He’s goofy and earnest and a pretty good catcher, and Lucas wonders what took him so long to befriend him in the first place.

He can’t help but think if he and Riley hadn’t drifted as much as they had, maybe he never would’ve stepped out of his comfort zone and been inspired to branch out and meet so many amazing people.

Some of his growing friendships come from familiar but unexpected places. The summer between ninth and tenth grade allows for him and Farkle to spend some time together while Riley and Zay go off to a dance camp, and after a little bit of adjustment Lucas comes to actually enjoy Farkle Minkus quite a lot. He’s every bit as eccentric and privileged as he figured he was, but there’s a lot of authenticity beneath the pretentious façade that he wouldn’t have discovered unless he’d taken the chance to dig deeper.

He finds himself thinking a lot about what Riley said to him all those years ago about the content of people’s hearts. The people he chooses to surround himself with, he wants them to have that good intention at their cores. He figures he should thank her for that in the long run, because she set him up with high expectations from the very beginning.

He strengthens his bonds with Zay and Smackle. Cory volunteers to help him learn how to drive when he gets his permit, but it’s Josh who does most of the heavy duty teaching. The summer is filled with long, adventurous drives to anywhere and everywhere within the state limits, full of Josh’s selective taste in music, thoughtful conversation, and the occasional roadside mishap that he terms “learning experiences.”

Doesn’t feel as objectively good as the kissing, but a vastly more useful skill in the long run.

Sometimes, other friends will tag along on these journeys with them. Farkle occupies the back seat on a couple while the others are away for camp, and Smackle takes up even more time challenging Josh on a spectrum of philosophical queries. Maya negotiates her way into a ride or two, and although it’s some of the few times Lucas sees her he’s relieved and amazed that it feels as though nothing has changed between them. They exchange their jabs and crack jokes just as much as they usually do, aside from the time dedicated to Maya sneakily grilling Josh on the details of his relationship status and pretending to understand Vonnegut.

Zay is the most common bonus passenger, guiding the subject of their open road conversations towards the two topics he supposes Josh has the most knowledge to share: conspiracy theories and girls. Although it’s a conversation he’d rather avoid, Lucas has to admit it’s humorous to listen to Zay question Josh on every single aspect of the female specimen and how to interact with them.

Lucas doesn’t think Josh knows nearly as much as he claims he does, especially considering he stills hasn’t seemed to notice Maya’s undying infatuation with him. But he speaks confidently enough, and Lucas is grateful he hasn’t floated out of his life entirely so he’s happy to sort through what advice is actually worth a grain of salt on his own time.

Riley occasionally joins them on these outings, and although he hates himself for it, the ones where she’s present always end up being his favorites.

It’s another one of these small, unimposing instances where Lucas feels as though they’re going to be okay. That regardless of the distance that has formed between them, some way they’ll find their way back to each other just because of how natural it is. When she leans forward to adjust the music and breathes a joke into his ear, when their families get together for neighborhood cook-outs and the two of them entertain Auggie and his new friend Ava together, when that effortless smile blooms across her face the moment they make eye contact in the hallway.

When they escape from the cook-out chatter after the meal to find solace in her bedroom, taking a much needed break from the sheer amount of personality stuffed into her backyard when their entire street gets together. This moment is one in a million, and Lucas cherishes every second of it. They laugh about years old inside jokes, catch up on their suddenly separate lives, speaking in soft murmurs as to not blow their cover and send them back into the fray until they’re ready on their own terms. It’s a sense of belonging Lucas hasn’t felt in months, a peace he only feels when he’s with her and a state of being that’s going to ache the second he heads back across the street and the world outside of their own starts spinning again.

But for now it’s enough. They’re Riley and Lucas. She’s his best friend, and his heart belongs to her whether she recognizes it or not.

For what it’s worth, he doesn’t think there’s any other person who deserves it.

* * *

Life throws another curveball as the season shift from winter to spring, the flowers blossoming on the trees in their yards and the end of sophomore year coming right around the bend. It arrives in the form of a paper boy one warm Saturday afternoon, although the courier himself is neither an actual paper boy nor particularly happy to deliver it.

Zay tosses Lucas the baseball lazily, hardly giving it any effort. They’re playing catch more for the sake of doing something to avoid sitting in either of their houses. Zay’s parents are in a particularly heated argument about what color to paint the kitchen with their new renovations, and Lucas’s are participating in their usual routine of ignoring each other so pointedly their silence is downright deafening.

“I don’t get what the problem is,” Lucas says with a huff, catching the ball in his mitt. He sends it back the other way on reflex. “I didn’t do anything. All I did was not show up to class for once.”

“Well, that’s what she’s telling everyone.” Zay’s tone is matter-of-fact, but Lucas can hear the hint of amusement he’s trying to tamp down in the name of being a supportive friend. “She’s literally going around telling people that you skipped yesterday to avoid her. As if that’s such a big crime and not completely understandable given the circumstances.”

“What circumstances?”

Zay clears his throat. “Well, the fact that you’re not actually into her, and she’s a terrifying harpy moonlighting as a pretty but cutthroat sophomore girl.”

Lucas rolls his eyes as he catches the ball. “That’s not true. You shouldn’t say that about her.”

“Well, considering what she’s saying about you, I think I have the wherewithal to say whatever I damn well please.”

“SAT word?”

“SAT word,” he agrees, nodding. “Noun. Money or other means needed for a particular purpose.”

“Very nice.”

Zay smiles, doing a little dance to celebrate his obvious test preparedness. Lucas rolls the baseball in his palm, staring down at it rather than facing his friend.

“For the record, I was absent because I had a headache.” Zay makes a disbelieving hum, humoring him. “And there was a unit test in history that I didn’t study for.”

“Shh, don’t admit that too loudly. Teacher’s right across the street.”

Lucas makes a face, tossing the ball back at him. Zay catches it dramatically, bouncing backwards on his feet and winding up his next throw with an impressive amount of theatricality.

“Babineaux winds up the pass, this one is gonna be a big one folks. We’re looking at a freaking no hitter if this one gets through. But can Flyer Friar save the catch?”

He throws it as hard as he can muster, far beyond the constraints they’ve been working within. Lucas grits his teeth and takes off at a run down the sidewalk, drowning out Zay’s playful mixture of cheers and jeers as he pursues the ball.

He jumps just high enough to catch it as it makes its descent, living up to his JV nickname. He lands on his feet but cushions the blow with bent knees, dropping into a melodramatic roll and landing on his back. Staring up at the bright blue sky, he exhales and pumps his fist in the air with the ball intact.

“Oh!” Zay calls out, applauding. “There you have it, ladies and gents!”

He casts a glance in the direction of Riley’s house, eyes drawn to her bedroom window. It’s not as though he’s expecting her to be waiting there enjoying his exaggerated display of his baseball skill, but it’s where his gaze drifts anyway.

For a split second, he thinks he sees the curtains move. But it’s more than likely a trick of the light, and Zay appears over him a second later and blocks the view.

“I’m being so real, man, they’re going to make you varsity next year. Mark my words.” He offers a hand and pulls Lucas into a sitting position. “Well, as long as Missy doesn’t plot your murder first.”

“Dude, come on, leave her alone,” he sighs. Although she may be over the top, he sort of figures she has the right to be upset with him in the grand scheme of things. He has never been as into her as she has him, and both of them know it. All things considered, he likely is the villain in this situation.

Lately, he’s been wondering to himself if his heart is really all that good at all. Without Riley around to constantly reassure him, he’s growing increasingly sure it’s not.

He props his elbows on his knees. “For all intents and purposes, she does have valid complaints she could lodge about me. Not related to this, okay, but in general. I never did treat her all that well.”

“Hey, do not go all sad cow eyes and make this behavior justified,” Zay says flatly, plopping down into the grass next to him. His well-intentioned berating on behalf of Lucas’s self-esteem has almost gotten as good as Riley’s. “Okay, yeah, you never exactly went about one another the right way. But that’s not all on you, and if she wanted something from you she could’ve said so explicitly. She’s never complained about the tonguing either, has she?”

Lucas grimaces. “Don’t call it that.”

“I’m only being technical. But has she?”

“No.”

“And have you even really been all that tangled up in her web recently anyway?”

Lucas has to take a moment to think about it. Although they do still interact occasionally, their amount of time together has decreased steadily since last spring and only amounts to sporadic chance encounters at this point. “No, not recently.”

“Then she does not have the right to be talking mad shit about you. Give yourself a little credit, man.” He pats his shoulder. “You know what the problem is? Girls. Girls are nuts.”

Lucas rolls his eyes, climbing to his feet. “Okay.”

“I’m serious, man.” Zay leaps to his feet after him, catching the ball when Lucas shoves it at him. “I’m just saying, you should try swinging the other way. You play baseball, you’re good at that. Just give it a try sometime.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how that works.”

“I mean, have you ever even thought about it?”

Admittedly, he hadn’t given much thought to anything romantic at all. All of his musings about the topic always come back to the same person, and he’s been trying and failing for the last two years to train himself not to do that. “No, guess I haven’t.”

“That’s my point. That’s all I’m saying.” Zay tosses the ball in the air and catches it, suddenly thoughtful. “What you need is a new distraction to escape the old distraction. A decoy to throw Missy off.”

Lucas shakes his head. “That sounds like a horrible idea.”

“Yeah, yeah! You need like, someone totally unexpected. Someone who will break the expectations and make everyone stop talking about you and Missy tonguing.”

“Stop saying it like that!”

“You need a—,” Zay stops suddenly. “Farkle?”

“What?” Lucas blinks at him, totally dumbfounded. “I’m not _dating_ Farkle. I don’t think he’s on that team, for starters, and more importantly Smackle is completely in love with him. I would never do that to her. And furthermore—,”

“No, Farkle!” Zay says exasperatedly, turning him around by the arm and pointing down the street.

Like some sort of strange, gawky blackbird, Farkle is half riding, half running down the street towards them, arms flapping haphazardly at his sides.

Ever since Farkle met Josh, he had slowly begun to adapt his whole aesthetic to emulate Riley’s youngest uncle. The most obvious factor in this is the black beanie he now wears over his messy mop top, fitting with his pretentious art kid deal, but the more recent endeavor was taking to skateboarding the same way Josh had taught Lucas a couple years back.

Suffice to say, he’s not a natural. The boys watch as Farkle stumbles a couple more times off the longboard before giving up entirely, scooping it up into his arms and launching into a dedicated sprint the rest of the way.

He’s winded by the time he grinds to a halt in front of them, too out of breath to offer an explanation. He drops the board at their feet and leans over with his hands on his knees, wheezing for breath.

Zay leans over, muttering loud enough for Farkle to hear. “Way he’s panting, you’d think he ran a 5K.”

“Sounds rough. Why is his breathing so shallow?”

“Bad lungs. Theater kids are real into weed right now.”

Farkle lifts his head, irritation burning in his blue eyes. He shoves at Lucas, offering a surprising amount of strength for someone with such noodle-like arms.

“Why don’t either of you answer your phones?” he snarls, keeling over again.

Lucas reaches forward to help him up, Farkle accepting the help and looping his arm around his shoulder. He moves the two of them to the porch steps, Zay trailing along behind them with a combination of confusion and hilarity on his face.

“Sorry, we were playing catch,” Lucas says, lowering Farkle onto the step. “Did you run all the way from Quincy?”

“After it was clear neither of you were going to pick up your phones, yes.” His breathing begins to level out, losing some of its rasp. “I left about twenty minutes ago.”

“It took you twenty minutes? We’re like, half a mile apart.”

“Some of us aren’t athletes!” Farkle snaps, aiming a kick at Zay. He grins, jumping out of the way.

Farkle is too tired to protest further, taking another deep breath.

“What about one of the five cars your family owns?”

“Not all of us have permits yet, repeater,” he says, not-so-kindly reminding Lucas of the reason he’s a year older than everyone else in their grade.

Lucas elects to ignore the dig, writing it off as fatigue temper. He crosses his arms, shrugging. “What the hell is the big emergency, then?”

Farkle reaches into his back pocket, pulling out a folded up paper. Unfurling it, he hands it Lucas. “Check it out. Front page. Can’t miss it.”

Lucas flips it over to find the John Adams Chronicle staring back at him, their fabled school newspaper. Along the side, a small column detailing the new impact the school’s brand new trash system will have on the surrounding wildlife and environment as a whole offers a miniature blurb, noting that it continues on page seven. It’s the first thing his eyes catch, fixating on the byline bearing the name Riley Matthews as the author.

Zay, not so internally tortured by habit to search for his best friend no matter what, focuses on what Farkle instructed as he reads over his shoulder. His jaw drops. “Holy…”

Lucas shifts his focus to the cover story, an expose written by Isadora Smackle. A large photo of their principal, Harrison Yancy, consumes the center of the page while the text surrounds it. He’s holding his hands up to cover his face, a near comical demonstration of running from student photographers to hide his guilt.

“Laundering?” Lucas says in disbelief, squinting to read the first few paragraphs. “Smackle figured this out?”

Farkle nods proudly. It’s hard to miss the subtle smugness in his expression as he talks about their friend—Lucas wonders absentmindedly if Smackle isn’t the only one who is in love. “He’s been siphoning from the school funds for years. It’s the only reason he was able to afford his house in my neighborhood, as well as the new golden bathtub he just had installed.”

“Golden bathtub?” Zay’s eyes are wide. “All that money and he spent it on a shiny bathtub? What a waste.”

“It came out yesterday, but you weren’t at school,” Farkle explains. He eyes Zay disdainfully. “And someone doesn’t read the paper.”

“I’m just saying, you can’t look me in the eye and tell me blowing all that bank on a _bathtub_ isn’t a travesty. Buy a car! Buy a rare baseball card! A whole collection! Buy some God damn cocaine!”

Farkle ignores Zay, watching Lucas for his reaction. He pulls off his beanie, ruffling his hair subconsciously. “It’s honestly for the best. Yancy wasn’t doing anything good for John Adams. And the timing couldn’t have been better, considering what happened.”

“What?”

“You don’t know?” Farkle blinks at him. “Charlie broke up with Riley yesterday.”

It’s almost as if the ground drops out from under him. A myriad of emotions seems to attack him at once, making him feel unsteady on his feet a little queasy. Maybe he should be embarrassed that something as trivial as a high school break up got more of a shock out of him than their principal stealing money from the school, but he can’t bring himself to care when he’s busy processing every other emotion that just rushed his body.

It’s hard to hear Farkle with all the blood that has rushed to his ears. “Right before first bell. I mean, he didn’t even wait until after school so she could escape it in peace. But this totally took over the gossip mill, so it was all anyone was talking about. She was spared that much.”

Lucas always supposed that if he ever heard this news, he’d be happy. Overjoyed, elated, over the moon at the prospect of Charlie Gardner never crossing the threshold of their neighborhood ever again. And a small part of him, that ugly green part, does feel a sense of celebration.

But instead, he’s filled with negativity. Anger at Charlie for doing it so carelessly—offended that he would do it at all, as if he has no idea what he has with Riley Matthews as his girlfriend. Nerves over what the hell could happen next, but he pushes those thoughts deep down the moment they surface, not allowing himself the chance to spiral into delusions like he’s done so many times before.

Mostly, he’s riddled with concern. Anxious over how Riley handled the whole thing, how she got through the day, how she needed support and he had no idea. He wasn’t there when she needed him to be, and he had promised her once upon a time that he would be.

One of those many promises he can’t count on both hands, but never forgets.

* * *

Lucas doesn’t waste any time righting this wrong.

He spends the rest of the afternoon hastily gathering materials, stopping by the grocery store down the block and stuffing his backpack full of supplies. He fights the urge to barge over there right now and confront the situation head on, willing himself to be calm and be patient. The last thing Riley probably wants is more fuel added to the emotional fire, so he needs to be on his best behavior.

Besides, his parents aren’t going to let him go anywhere before dinner, and after that it’s curfew so he has to plan carefully.

He waits in his room with the door closed until his parents head to bed around midnight, nothing out of the ordinary from their normal routine. He clicks his door locked and shoulders his backpack, hefting open his window.

Ever since Riley climbed into his room after he got expelled, the troublemaker in him has taken great advantage of the fact that the tool shed backs up to his side of the house. He’s never told her this, of course, because he knows she would hate the fact that an act of kindness on her part encourages such tomfoolery on his end.

But finally, it seems as though he’s going to be able to return the favor. Scaling down the shed with years of practice under his belt, he checks his surroundings for Judy before jogging around the house and across the street.

He steps up onto the stoop and crouches in front of the door, checking under the welcome mat. He feels a slight sense of panic when their spare key isn’t in its usual spot, before remembering they switch it up every couple years and he just has to cycle through his vast store of Matthews family knowledge taking up vacancy in his memory.

He rises to his full height, reaching up and brushing along the frame of the front door. He winces when he knocks the spare off the lip of the wood, catching it inches before it hits the ground and blows his cover. With a small fist pump of victory he jumps off the porch, jogging around to the back of the house.

Lucas tries not to dwell on how easy it is to break into either of their houses with the right information as he gently slides the key into the back door, slinking into the Matthews home without invitation. To be fair, in some ways this place feels more like home than his ever does. But he knows that argument won’t hold up in a legal argument when Cory turns him over to the cops for breaking and entering.

He skirts through the kitchen as quietly as possible, holding his breath when he notices the blue glow of the television lighting the living room. Cory is passed out on the couch with a bag of chips on his lap, clearly having dozed off unintentionally.

Lucas moves at a snail’s pace towards the stairs, peeling off his shoes and leaving them by the kitchen. He’s much quieter in his socks alone, and the chances of Cory waking up and noticing his shoes are far less likely than him waking up and noticing him _because_ of his shoes.

When he reaches the stairs and progresses to the top step, he lets out a tentative exhale of relief. If he’s gotten this far, he doesn’t see how he couldn’t complete the journey.

His faith is shaken when he’s inches from Riley’s room, a door creaking open to his right and catching him off-guard. He spins around like a deer in headlights just as a flashlight beam shines in his direction, catching him red-handed.

The beam is coming from a much lower height than he anticipated.

“Auggie?” he whispers uncertainly, squinting to see through the light.

There’s a long pause, then the flashlight beam adjusts to shine towards the ceiling between them. Auggie’s suspicious expression is directed right at him.

“Lucas. What are you doing here?” He hesitates. “How did you get in here?”

He doesn’t have a good excuse, so he shrugs it off as casually as he can manage. “We’ll talk about that later.”

“You’re here for Riley,” he states, as if it’s not the most obvious statement in the world.

In this case, Lucas figures honesty is the best policy. He nods.

Auggie’s whole demeanor changes in an instant. He doesn’t know if he really thought he was here to rob them, but his candid response seems to have won him over.

“Are you going to help her?” There’s worry shining through his eyes, and he speaks with a hesitancy that stems more from confusion than the present necessity for quiet. “She’s been in there since I got up this morning. She didn’t even come down for dinner, even though she told mom she was fine.”

“Is she—,”

“She’s not okay,” Auggie says urgently, like it’s a dangerous secret. “I can hear her. She’s been crying all day.”

A sinking, icy feeling creeps through him, starting in his chest and chilling down to his stomach. He never likes it when Riley cries, because he knows she is the last person who deserves it. Another surge of anger towards Charlie shoots through his limbs, but his primary concern is the girl on the other side of the door.

“I’m going to try,” Lucas assures Auggie. “But I can’t do that if I get caught. Can you keep an eye out for me?”

“Don’t worry about it. Dad’s couch comatose, and mom is the heaviest sleeper in the house. If you made this far, you’re good.” He heaves a sigh, clicking off his flashlight and submerging them in darkness. “But I guess I can keep a look out.”

“Thanks,” Lucas says with an exhale, nodding until he remembers Auggie probably can’t see him through the dark. “Thank you, Auggie.”

“Just make my sister happy again,” he says tiredly, shutting his door and leaving him alone in the hallway.

Lucas swivels around, turning his attention back to the task at hand. He approaches the door, pressing close to the wood and listening for any sign of movement. If she’s sleeping, he doesn’t want to wake her up and rob her of some well-deserved rest.

For a long moment, nothing. Then, a small gasp breaks through the quiet. A couple of sniffs.

Someone trying their absolute hardest not to be heard. Suffering in silence.

Tentatively, he ventures a light knock on the door. The sniffling ceases with a startled huff, pitching them back into silence. Lucas knocks again, rapping his knuckles against the wood.

He hears shuffling on the other side of the door. “Mom, please, go to bed. I’m—,”

The door opens a bit and Riley pokes her head out, ready to send her concerned parents away. In the time it takes his eyes to adjust to the dark, she goes through about five different expressions of shock before she manages to speak.

“Lucas?” she says timidly, barely louder than a whisper. She looks like she can’t believe her eyes.

He nods, stepping closer to her so that he can hear her without disturbing anyone else. “Can I come in? If your dad wakes up and catches me, I’m never getting out of here alive.”

Riley steps back and pulls the door open for him to slip through without comment. She continues to blink at him, attempting to rationalize how and why he’s there in front of her.

It’s strange, how small her voice is. All the sudden, the girl with a lot to say doesn’t seem to want to say anything at all. “What are you doing here?”

“That’s not a very grateful thing to say. You shouldn’t question your best friend when he’s on a mission to rescue you.”

She stares blankly at him, disbelieving. He decides to push past the awkwardness, dropping his backpack off his shoulder and placing it on the bed.

“Much like your own former quest, I come bearing commodities.”

She tilts her head, smiling ever so lightly. Already, he’s succeeded in making her world a little less dark. “SAT word?”

“SAT word,” he agrees, pulling out his haul from the convenience store.

A couple of boxes of chocolate. A bag of white cheddar and movie theater butter popcorn. A collection of Starburst candies, pink and orange only. He spreads his wares out on the bedspread as Riley wanders over to join him, picking up one of the sweets.

Lucas pulls one last item out of his bag, dangling the small stuffed sheep from its chain. It’s one of those cheap key chains they stick at the checkout counter in an effort to get you to spend two more dollars you don’t need to, but in this case it worked on him. It’s adorable, the color of lavender. Maybe it’s because she was on his mind already—as she always is—but he thought of her the moment he saw it.

“What is all this?”

“Care package.” He twirls the sheep on his finger before holding it out for her, nodding for her to take it from him. “I guess, in so many words.”

She takes the tiny sheep, rolling it over in her palm. A wave of fondness floods her features until confusion takes over again, furrowing her brow. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I did.”

She hugs the sheep in her closed fist, pressing her knuckles to her lips anxiously. She eyes him suspiciously, strikingly similar to her younger brother’s master glare. “Why?”

“Because you’re my best friend. I don’t need another reason.” When she doesn’t ease the inquisitive stare, he relents somewhat. “And I heard some things.”

He can practically see her defenses go up. “Oh, did you?”

“I did.” He works to hold back the bitterness clogged up inside him over the last two years, but a sampling escapes anyway. “Kind of shocked I didn’t hear it from you, honestly.”

Riley’s lip trembles, and he regrets the comment immediately. He’s such an idiot, always motivated more by his negative emotions than his good ones. If the content of his heart is supposedly good, then he figures Riley’s must be pure gold in comparison.

“Well, I’ve heard some stuff, too,” she huffs haughtily. “Missy had a lot to say about you yesterday. I wanted to defend you, but then I realized I didn’t know if she was telling the truth or not. Was she?”

Lucas makes his way around her, settling down on the edge of her bed. He shrugs, maintaining as neutral an expression as possible. “I don’t know what she said. So I can’t say.”

“She said you skipped school to avoid her because you were going to break her heart. She said you led her on and that you were too scared of your feelings for her to act on them the way you should. That you were running from them instead.”

It’s impressive, he has to admit, how accurately she pegged him in the latter half of that tirade. He thanks his lucky stars he never joined the gossip circle in gym class, or else he figures the one factor in that statement that is incorrect—the subject—would have been eagerly corrected in no time.

“She said you kissed. Like, a lot.” Riley’s voice softens, her eyes twinkling with something that seems an awful lot like insecurity. He doesn’t know why, but suddenly he feels bad for kissing Missy. Not for the reasons he should, but because when he’s looking into Riley’s eyes, it suddenly feels like a deep betrayal. “Is that true?”

His tone is flat for the sake of avoiding any accidental emotion. “Yeah.”

Her voice quivers slightly. “I didn’t know you liked her.”

Lucas debates with himself for a long moment, choosing his next words carefully.

“I don’t.”

There’s a pause. He holds his breath, not sure what exactly he wants or expects to happen next.

To his surprise, Riley’s expression lightens somewhat. There’s a ghost of a smile on her face. She shifts her gaze from him down to the food spread out on the bed, letting out a heavy sigh. “White cheddar or butter?”

They opt for the movie theater butter. She pops open the bag and climbs onto the bed across from him, opening one of the boxes of chocolate and emptying it into the popcorn. After a hasty shake she takes a handful of the concoction, spinning the bag to face him.

He takes some for himself, chewing on it thoughtfully while Riley digs in. Considering Auggie’s comment that she skipped dinner, he pats himself on the back for bringing along some sustenance. As it turns out, looks like she really needs it.

Once she stops inhaling junk food long enough to hold a conversation, the two of them take the time to catch up. It feels a lot like the conversation from the cook-out all those months ago, the universe regaining balance and returning to normal. Even more similar is the presence of an obvious discussion point they’re happily avoiding, exhausting every other possible conversation topic in the meanwhile.

It’s not until they’ve finished the popcorn that the moment presents itself. The clock on her bedside table reads past three in the morning. He could make the excuse that sleep is a human necessity and sneak away, dodging the issue forever with reasonable cause. With Charlie and Missy objectively out of the picture, things will likely go back to normal between them regardless. He doesn’t have to venture the subject, if he doesn’t want to.

But he knows why he came in the first place. Because he knows his best friend, and he know she’ll bottle this up like she does everything else and not allow herself the chance to actually process it. It’ll just burrow inside her along with all the other heartaches she doesn’t let anybody see, consuming her until it eats away at her entirely.

He doesn’t ever want to see her reach that point. Riley, his passionate and stubborn and wonderfully odd best friend, stretched out next to him on her bed with bleary eyes rimmed red with tears she’s already shed but is pretending didn’t happen.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Riley lets out a sigh, closing her eyes. He worries for a second that she’s going to ignore his question altogether and fall asleep, but she answers after a bit of thoughtful silence.

“It’s not that big of a deal,” she says calmly, clearly having given the situation some thought. She opens her eyes, rolling onto her side to look at him. “I mean, did I think I was going to be with him forever? Did I want to like, marry him? Did I see that future with him?”

This is all far deeper than Lucas ever thought to look at it. For all he knew, the answer was probably yes.

“No,” she says flatly. “So this had to happen eventually.”

“But that doesn’t mean it’s not a big deal,” he argues softly. He maintains her gaze, hoping if he’s sincere enough she’ll recognize her own emotional worth as easily as he sees it. “It’s got to hurt. You’re allowed to be upset about it. You don’t have to pretend like everything is fine.”

She shakes her head, flopping back onto her back. She crinkles her nose. “I don’t think that’s what I’m upset about. I really don’t.”

“So, what then? Why cry for hours over a boy if you don’t even care?”

“Because I changed things,” she says faintly, keeping her eyes trained on the ceiling. “Everything is different, and it’s my fault.”

Despite her lack of eye contact, Lucas can see the glimmer in her eyes as they gloss over with fresh tears.

Oh no.

“What are you talking about?”

Riley sits up suddenly, taking a shaky breath in an attempt to keep the tears at bay. “Don’t act like it’s not true. I got a boyfriend, and everything totally turned upside down.”

“That’s not—,”

“We barely saw each other all year last year,” she says thickly, lip trembling again. “We live across the street, we were best friends who talked every day. Then he came into the picture and I jumped into his world and completely dropped everything here. All the sudden, all we did was wave at each other at the random moments we happened to be taking the trash out at the same time.”

“That’s not on you,” Lucas says, sitting up as well. Riley’s on her feet, pacing the carpet and wringing the sheep keychain anxiously in her hands. “This is a two way street, pun not intended. You can’t blame yourself for everything that happens with everyone around you.”

“You’re my best friend,” she says tearfully, a usually cheerful phrase delivered with a Shakespearian level of agony. “And I just let you go without even fighting. I lost you.”

“Hey, no.” Lucas pushes himself to his feet. “No way. You didn’t lose me.”

“When you showed up at the door tonight, it was like—!” She presses her palms to her eyes, voice quivering. She shakes her head, and when she pulls her hands away her face is flushed. “Like I was dreaming or something. Because there was no way you were going to come back to me as if we were best friends and nothing had changed. Because I screwed it all up.”

“Riley, stop.”

“I let it all change! I’m not good at this. I’m not good at anything!”

“We are best friends, and nothing has changed.” Lucas steps forward and takes her shoulders, gripping them firmly and waiting for her to lift her head to look at him. “Or maybe it has, but who gives a shit? You have me, you still have me. You will always have me.”

A couple of tears slip down her cheeks. He resists the urge to wipe them away, keeping his focus on his words.

“Charlie is garbage. I’m sorry, I’m sure he’s a nice guy and everything, but he’s garbage for tossing you to the side regardless of how mutual or clean the break up was. Yes, we drifted the past couple of years but that is just as much on me as it is you. I could’ve said something, or made an effort. I should’ve said something. But we also have different interests, and class schedules. I’m playing baseball and you’re out there writing kickass hard-hitting journalism, and that’s going to wedge a little distance in there. That’s life, it has to.”

The corners of her mouth turn upwards just slightly at the mention of her article, eyes still welling with tears. He lets his hands slide down her arms, pressing his thumbs into the crook of her elbows and matching his gaze to hers.

“Things are going to change, whether we want them to or not. I think we’re both figuring that out.” He exhales, shaking his head in resignation. “But you are my best friend. You always have me. Don’t ever convince yourself that you don’t.”

Riley’s lip trembles again, more tears spilling over her cheeks as her face scrunches into a frown. Lucas wonders what on Earth he said so wrong to send her into hysterics when she wraps her arms around him and pulls him into a tight hug, crying into his shirt.

For having not interacted substantially for weeks, this is a lot of contact to handle all at once. Lucas hesitates, panicking over what to do and overthinking until a sudden wave of calmness washes over him. His mistake was assuming he needs to think at all when it comes to Riley, as if everything between them hasn’t always been natural and instinctual. A pattern he simply trusts because it’s the two of them, and it’s never let him down.

Calmer than before, Lucas relaxes into the hug and drapes his arms around her shoulders. She reacts by holding onto his torso more securely and crying even harder, although he considers maybe that’s not a bad sign. Maybe it’s exactly what she needs, someone who she feels safe enough with to allow herself to feel all those emotions she’s always assuring everyone she doesn’t have.

He’s more than happy to be that person. Being anything to Riley has always been an alluring prospect, and this role seems vitally important.

He doesn’t know how long they stand there, only breaking the embrace once Riley has exhausted all of her tears. She pushes back a bit and wipes her face with the back of her hand, giving him a shy smile.

“Sorry,” she murmurs, taking a deep breath. “Didn’t mean to drench your shirt.”

He shrugs. “It’ll dry.”

She laughs, collapsing on the floor against the foot of the bed in a puddle of sheer fatigue. He settles down next to her, slouching back and tilting his head to look at her.

A hiccup escapes her lips, eliciting a giggle of embarrassment. She pulls her knees up to her chest, adjusting to face him.

“Do you still love me?”

The question catches him off-guard. It suddenly feels loaded, like he could spend hours trying to determine the correct answer and still overthink it. Lord knows things have changed, and the answer isn’t as simple as it was when they were little.

Then again, it’s the simplest thing in the world.

He locks eyes with her, offering a smile. “Never stopped.”

She tilts her head, mirroring his smile with a watery one of her own. She scoots closer to him and envelops his arm in hers, leaning into him and resting her head against his shoulder. He hesitates before letting his head drop against hers, reclining into that familiar sense of comfort and feeling of peace.

All that distance between them shattered in an instant, putting them back where they belong.


	6. seventeen ( riley )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Tell me how to feel about you now,_  
>  Oh, let me know.  
> Should I suffocate or let go? 
> 
> \-- Paramore, "Tell Me How"

Considering how drastically the rest of the world shifts around her the older she gets, Riley cannot begin to express how grateful she is for Lucas Friar.

Despite the rough patch earlier in their high school career, the moment they come back together as a duo it’s like they were never apart in the first place. In some ways, it feels as though the universe is back in order. There’s a familiarity and stability to her best friend that she’s never fully appreciated until now, but she doesn’t plan on forgetting it any time soon.

As if to combat the changing tides around them as college creeps closer and closer, she and her friends find themselves committing to certain routines like some sort of cosmic rebellion. Even though all of them get their licenses within the next year and have the full capability to drive to school, the five of them on Adams street agree to continue their usual practice of getting to school via other methods. Usually, it’s walking—which as Riley points out is good for their health, and as Lucas points out as newly appointed vice president of the environmental club is even better for the atmosphere—but sometimes they go the truly old school route and wheel it.

These are Riley’s least favorite days, as Maya doesn’t own a bike of her own and often takes to catching a ride on her handlebars. It was cute and fun when they were smaller, but now Riley makes the whole ride hoping not to crash into anything or drift into oncoming traffic with her pretty blonde friend blocking her view.

It’s those days where she uses Lucas as a beacon, guiding the way to school on his skateboard with Zay and his scooter right on his tail.

He’s certainly got the height for it now, officially matching the height of her father which seems to bother him more than anyone else. Cory claims that means Lucas is done growing, that he couldn’t possibly get any taller, but Topanga comments that he might still have a few more inches to go. It’s unclear whether she says this because she believes it or just to rile up her husband, but the mischievous grin that sweeps across her face at his reaction indicates the latter.

If she could have it her way, Riley would rather he not grow one more centimeter. As nice as it is to have someone consistently taller than her—she prays at five inches over five feet that she’s done stretching forever—the height just makes him appear older and acts as this constant reminder that they’re still growing up. They’re leaving their childhood behind bit by bit, trapped to the march of time that she detests so much due to how little control she has over it.

Maybe she only notices it with him so visibly because of how often she finds herself staring at him. At the lunch table, in between classes, during history when she’s supposed to be learning about the American revolution. There’s a war going on up on the whiteboard but her focus is trained solely on the back of his head, wondering how the hell he stays so tan in the middle of winter and resisting the timeless urge to flatten the cowlicks on the back of his head. She has such a good vantage point of them from two desks away.

Her classmates had been whispering since about fourth grade about how good-looking her best friend is. Of course, the adjectives shifted with time as their vocabulary expanded—“cute,” “handsome,” the ever so eloquent “hot”—but none of them had ever really made sense to her. Sure, he was objectively pretty with his green eyes and broad shoulders, but he was still Lucas. The kid who grew up across the street from her, wore Cuddle Bunny band-aids until he was in middle school, read that silly horse encyclopedia cover to cover so many times that the binding is worn. He’s always been Lucas, her neighbor and best friend. Commentary on his maturing appearance just seemed like useless chatter.

Now, considering how much time she spends with her eyes glued to him, she suddenly gets it. Instead of vindication against her gossipy classmates, she realizes she’s been the one not paying attention.

She first notices it the night of her first official house party, the entire neighborhood crew heading to Haley Fisher’s place in Quincy together to brave the experience one of the last summer evenings before senior year. Farkle meets them at the community entrance, buzzing them through the gate and leading the way to the festivities.

Smackle immediately reaches forward to take Farkle’s hand, and Riley can’t help the proud smile that creeps onto her face. She always figured it was a matter of time until the two of them stopped playing rivals and admitted their feelings for each other. It’s a relief to see them happier and getting to enjoy their shared affection, but she has to admit the twenty bucks she won in her bet against Zay is a pretty sweet bonus.

“I’d rather not have an arrest on my record for simply examining my classmates in their natural habitat. Especially this close to college application season,” Smackle states nervously, stepping closer to her boyfriend as they make their way up the street towards the cul-de-sac at the top of the hill. Riley can hear the bass thumping the closer they get. “We don’t think this is going to be too out of hand, do we?”

“I sure hope so,” Maya snickers, the typical troublemaking gleam in her eyes.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Lucas says helpfully.

Haley greets them when they get to the door, giving Farkle a particularly friendly squeeze on the shoulder as he passes through. Riley suspects intoxication is one contributing factor, but it occurs to her once again just how strange and unpredictable attraction can be. While most of the girls in the locker room before gym were drooling all over her best friend or baseball superstar Billy Ross, Haley was dreamily thinking about her other lanky friend with his floppy hair and condescending resting bitch face.

Although, Haley has grown up with Farkle, knowing him just about as long as she’s known Lucas. Maybe there’s a deeper connection there born out of the circumstances of meeting the world together, regardless of whether you’re raised in the middle class suburbs of Adams or the pristine gated community of Quincy.

If Haley feels a fraction of the attachment and comfort with Farkle as she does when she’s Lucas, then she supposes she understands it. Even though she’s strictly team Smackle, she has to empathize a little bit.

It’s in her nature to find the beauty in every surrounding, but something about the aura of a party is truly otherworldly. It’s a unique kind of magical surrealism, seeing all the people she spends every day at school with suddenly transform into new, less inhibited human beings the moment alcohol touches their lips. Everything sort of exists with this conditional understanding attached that whatever happens on this night in this house may not matter or continue to exist in the morning, Kendrick Lamar underscoring this fleeting freedom with a lyrical whimsy.

If she’s being honest, the prospect of consuming too much of any mind-altering substance gives her unbridled anxiety. Maya convinces her to drink just enough of the disgusting stuff (“God, why does anyone choose to drink this anyway?”) to feel at least a buzz, tipsiness offering her a light, floaty feeling as she continues to examine the strange, ephemeral world around her.

The edges seem to blur away, painting the magical scenery even more alluring. As long as she stays exactly where she is, observing the world from a safe distance and admiring the color and energy of her classmates around her, then she decides this whole shindig isn’t half bad.

Like usual, her attention is drawn to Lucas across the room the moment she spots him. She can’t help but think about how easily her gaze finds him in any setting—she’s like a magnet, polarized in such a way that she’s pulled in his direction no matter where he is. She’s a compass and he’s true North, that beacon guiding her in the right direction.

It’s in the haze of the house party that she realizes it. She figures she can blame it on the alcohol, but from her vantage point by the sink all of the sudden she is incredibly aware of how attractive her best friend really is. Yes, it’s the eyes and the shoulders, and the damn tan, but it’s all the other little things she’s been filing away in her mind that are illuminated in the saturated color of the party scene. The subtle untidy quality of his hair, the light, lopsided smirk on his face as he listens to Dave Williams ramble on about something or other. It’s that height… that stupid, stupid five inches on her.

It’s not the first time she’s thought about it since it happened, but she finds herself thinking about their first kiss. Gaze trained on his lips from all the way across the room, wondering how outlandish it would be to march over there and steal another one off of him. If he’d be offended by such an act of thievery, or if maybe he’d give it up without a fight. If maybe, just maybe, he’s impatiently waiting for her to do it.

If that’s something she secretly wants, even if she would never contemplate it in the light of day.

“Hey, Riles,” Maya greets her, blonde hair tousled from dancing and blue eyes about one drink away from glossing over past tipsy and into full-blown drunk. But she seems to know her limits better than she does, so she’s not going to question her. “You doing good?”

Riley tosses one more glance in the direction of her best friend. Her attractive, damningly beautiful best friend who makes every situation feel safe and who she may or may not want to kiss again.

“I’m fine,” she says pleasantly, tearing her gaze away from him and smiling at Maya. “So fine.”

“Yeah, think you’ve had enough,” Maya says with a laugh, wrapping her arm around her waist and walking her back into the crowd to the rest of the party.

The next morning, hangover free but clouded with the surrealism of the night, Riley decides the insight isn’t worth stressing over. Just another one of those fleeting freedoms, evaporated by Monday morning when their inhibitions return and reality consumes them once again.

* * *

Growing up and “glowing up” aside, Riley barrels her way through senior year at a speed that only feels too fast in hindsight.

She’s busy working through college applications and studying for her honors classes and working through the senior year bucket list Maya crafted for their neighborhood (including Farkle, who had officially been deemed an honorary Adams Street kid after the official start of his relationship with Smackle). She’s spending time with her family and squeezing out every possible second of time with her friends, far too preoccupied to notice how quickly the days are flitting past.

She supports Zay’s contentious decision to apply to college for dance, an artistic pursuit Farkle and Smackle don’t seem to understand and of which his parents are only hesitantly encouraging. Riley can understand their nerves from the uncertainty of it all, but if anyone has the talent and drive to make it out there it’s her friend Isaiah Babineaux. She gives him all the unconditional support no one else will, being a personal cheerleader with Lucas acting as her right hand man.

When he gets back acceptances from both the conservatories he applies to, it feels like a worthy expense of energy.

She stands by Maya through all of her senior year emotional whirlwinds, from her breakdown over whether or not to apply to art school to her dramatic decision to chop off all her hair when she’s driven herself crazy waiting for admission responses. Riley has no idea whether it’s a healthy coping mechanism or not, but she figures it’s better than drowning her stress in other substances and if anyone can rock a bob, it’s her self-assured, fiery friend.

Considering all the stress everyone seems to be going through at all times in the last few months of their high school careers, she continues to be eternally thankful for her best friend.

Lucas certainly has his own problems to face as the school year goes on, but there’s something about their friendship that allows them to face whatever dilemmas they’re confronted with as a team, and that does wonders to lessen the pressure. He’s there for every major decision she makes over the course of the year, and she makes sure to return the favor with no hesitancy. They’re approaching milestones, about to embark on the rest of their lives, and she wants to be there for every second of his.

Not to mention, it’s a perfect excuse to spend time together. From convincing him to be the one to teach her how to drive in junior year all the way to the final weeks of senior year, Riley finds every conceivable way to ensure that their bond is as strong as ever.

For what it’s worth, she finds it far easier to maintain than it felt the last couple years. She doesn’t know what it is, but whatever hell they went through in the first part of their high school days seems to have been the worst of it and set them up for an even stronger attachment. It’s part of the reason she craves his presence—something about being with him feels so settled and right that she doesn’t have to worry about anything else. It’s that sense of safety, coloring all of their interactions with a warm, rosy hue that she would never, ever want to go without.

What never ceases to amaze her is how much they can talk. They’ve always been chatterboxes with one another despite being relatively quiet in larger groups, and with all the time they spent apart it makes sense that they’d have a lot to catch up on at first. But they seemingly never run out, and Riley finds herself treasuring the amount of hours they can spend rambling about everything and nothing at all.

Now that they’re older, their subject of conversation is also wider a net than ever before. He’s the only person she feels entirely comfortable sharing her opinions with, and there’s an insatiable hunger to how nice it feels to be listened to so attentively. They talk and they listen—on the porch steps during a sweltering summer, on night drives when the rest of the neighborhood is asleep but the city and the interstate are wide awake, in her room lit only by moonlight when they talk in soft murmurs because her father is suddenly concerned about the nature of their relationship and he’s not supposed to be over after dark.

Riley assures her father numerous times that regardless of how much deeper their bond is becoming, Lucas is nothing more than a friend. Her best friend, but just a friend. As he’s always been.

For whatever reason, he never believes her.

* * *

Riley realizes she’s asking more promises of Lucas than she thinks she has in all their years of friendship combined. It’s a lot of little things—that he’ll be there to pick her up after physics class, that he saves her a seat at the homecoming game, that he doesn’t make a college decision announcement without telling her first—but a few of them she discovers are a subtle way of testing the boundaries of their iron-clad bond. She’s sworn him to many promises over the years and she can’t think of a time when he’s ever broken one, and she has to marvel at how loyal her best friend actually is.

The grandest one and by far the most important is that they never have a repeat of sophomore year and lose touch with one another again. She’s lucky enough they came back to each other the first time, and she doesn’t want to try her chances. It feels especially paramount with college and their separate paths coming around the bend, but it also seems like one both of them are more than determined to keep.

One promise she was admittedly surprised he agreed to was that if neither of them found new love by the time April rolled around, they would go to prom together as friends. No dramatic proposal, no great expectations, just the assurance of beloved company on what’s supposed to a life-changing night.

The flutter in her stomach when Lucas keeps his promise yet again is another sensation she’s becoming dangerously addicted to in association with him. She can’t help the bashful smile on her face when she opens her locker to find a small, purple plush cat sitting on her shelf with a carefully folded note attached to its collar.

_Prom? –L_

As if the somewhat vague signature was even necessary. As if she wouldn’t recognize the neat scrawl of her best friend from whom she’s collected dozens of notes over the years in the bottom of her desk drawer.

Riley isn’t sure what’s more astounding—the fact that he agreed to such a promise in the first place without a shred of hesitancy, or the fact that a guy as good-looking as him didn’t pick up a flurry of potential prom dates over the time that passed between the agreement and it’s due date.

She thinks about asking him why he thought an invitation of any kind was necessary when they agreed a proposal was far from it, unspoken like so much else about their friendship. She thinks about teasing him over how he must’ve broken into her locker like some kind of juvenile criminal (“more like Nancy Drew amateur detective,” she can practically hear him say).

When she enters the cafeteria that afternoon with the little cat in her arms and he smiles at her from their usual table, for a brief second, she considers forgoing all the words and stealing that second kiss instead. Just to even the score. Just to catch him off-guard.

Instead, she asks him where the hell he found a stuffed purple cat on such short notice. He’s predictably vague, enjoying the small triumph of having information she doesn’t. She also gauges him for approval on her chosen pet name of Violet, which he happily gives her.

The days continue to fly by and prom is on her doorstep before she knows it, Smackle and Maya coming over to get ready with her. Smackle proves herself adept at hairstyling and crafts Riley’s temperamental waves into a delicate braided up do, Maya taking the reins on everyone’s make up. After an hour or so of primping and listening to the carefully curated playlist of pop hits from their childhood, Topanga knocks lightly on the door to check on their progress.

She hums proudly, pressing her hands to her chest and smiling. “Look at you. My three beautiful little warriors, all grown up.”

Maya’s laugh reeks of disbelief, but Riley can’t help but agree with her mother. Both of her friends look absolutely stunning in their red and silver gowns, and she can’t help but feel a bit lackluster in her choice of lavender. Not that she thinks she could pull off crimson like Maya, but she seriously doubts anybody is going to look at her in comparison as if she’s the one to be paying attention to.

“You might want to hurry it up,” her mother advises, crossing her arms. “I suspect Isaiah has already had a bit to drink and he’s a little antsy. Not to mention your father might escalate from grilling Lucas to attempted murder at any second.”

“Grilling Lucas?” Smackle says, frowning. “Hasn’t he known him since he was five years old? What could he possibly have to grill him on?”

“That’s what you’d think, isn’t it?”

Riley grabs her purse, nodding an affirmation in the direction of her mother. “Well, let’s not force any of the boys to find out.”

They file out one by one, Riley hanging back last to turn off the light. Topanga catches her attention as she passes, lightly squeezing her rib and giving her an affectionate smile.

“You look positively lovely.”

Riley smiles, accepting a kiss on the cheek. She squeezes her mother’s arm in response. “Had to get it from somewhere.”

Topanga returns the beam, nudging her towards the stairs.

The rest of the group is already well on their way to getting their things together, her first floor feeling like chaos the moment she descends the stairs. Maya and Zay are cackling about something, and Riley figures her mother is probably right about his starting intoxication level from the way he’s snorting. Farkle and Smackle are negotiating the pinning of his corsage while his mother hovers fussily around them, trying to get everyone to move towards the backyard for photos. Cory is shouting about something, and Riley is relieved to see he’s preoccupied with Auggie rather than taking any of his promenade nerves out on her date. She’s shaky enough between avoiding tripping over her dress and treading in high heels, she doesn’t need that wrench thrown into the mix as well.

No, Lucas is nowhere near her father. The usual magnetism draws her eyes to him standing in the middle of the commotion by the foot of the stairs, seemingly oblivious to it all. For all the noise and distraction and other factors worthy of his attention at present, somehow his gaze is trained solely on her.

She feels as though maybe she’s evened the score without realizing it. The expression on his face is definitely tinted with a little bit of surprise, his mouth hanging open ever so slightly as her takes her in. Still, there’s something undeniably soft about his features, the way she’s always preferred them. She wishes she could snap a picture of the moment, the look on his face, the way it feels to be the one absorbing all of his attention.

Of course, she disrupts all of that on her own accord. She stumbles on the last step and nearly twists her ankle before the night even begins, Lucas reaching out to grab her and save her from completing the tumble.

His hands are around her waist, but it’s more of a rescue maneuver than anything remotely dreamy. The amused smirk that blooms across his lips is a quick replacement for the former awe. Figures.

“Nice reflexes,” Riley compliments, accepting his assistance back onto her feet. He touches her arms pointedly, making sure she’s steady. “You must be an athlete.”

Lucas gasps, raising his eyebrows. “Good instincts. It’s almost as if you know me.”

“I’m sensing baseball. Maybe left fielder? Shortstop?”

Maya interrupts their exchange, pausing on her way to the backyard. “I don’t know what weirdo roleplay thing you two are doing, but cut it out and hurry up. We have paparazzi to attend to before we can blow this joint.”

* * *

Although it was impossible to live up to the societally set expectations, Riley thoroughly enjoys her senior promenade and what it has to offer her. Not so much because of the dancing and the dressing up and the faux champagne meets faerie-like aesthetic to the whole thing—although she does reap a fair bit of delight from all that—but more so because it’s one of the final grand exploits she gets to experience with her constellation of friends. She doesn’t think they’ll ever completely lose one another, but it’s one of the last nights she has with all of them as they are, right now, and she treasures every minute of it.

She tries not to feel embittered over all of the small intimate moments Farkle and Smackle share that the rest of their group does not. The smaller touches, meaningful glances, soft kisses to conclude the few slow dances of the evening. It’s not their fault they’re the only romantic engagement amongst them, and Riley made the choice to come to the event with her best friend rather than an actual date.

Even still, she he can’t think of anyone else she’d rather be there with than Lucas. He doesn’t disappoint all her fantasies, offering her a hand for more than one of the slow dances. She assumes he does it not because he has any interest, but simply because he knows she’s been dreaming about them for so long. There’s no soft kisses, sure—although she’d be lying if she claimed she didn’t ponder the potential, due purely to the setting and situation—but Lucas isn’t a terrible dancer and they only step on each other’s feet a couple of times. She’s giggling so much, she doesn’t even care.

Rounding out the evening with one last dance with her favorite people erases her petty irritations entirely. By the end of the night, she forgets her jealousy with the earnest reminder of how lucky she is regardless.

They’re piled into the Babineaux minivan as they make their way back, Maya behind the wheel despite Zay’s insistence that he’s perfectly sober enough to drive (likely untrue) and that with her speeding record they’re just as unsafe with her taking control (not completely false). Although Smackle is keeping up an eager, adrenaline-filled conversation with whoever will listen, Riley doesn’t contribute much. After all the excitement, she’s crashing fast and she can barely keep her eyes open as they barrel down the highway towards home.

She ventures a more comfortable position and plops her head down on Lucas’s shoulder. They’re cramped into the back seat together, sharing the space with all of their bags and belongings. He’s plenty close enough, and she’s grateful when he doesn’t protest or pull away.

He chuckles instead. Riley opens an eye for the lone purpose of giving him the stink eye.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he says, tone laced with the same smugness he gets whenever he know something she doesn’t. It would be incredibly irritating if she didn’t find it so endearing. “You’re just so predictable.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

He shrugs, jostling her restful position. “You have the energy capacity of a seven year old. A seven year old at a birthday party who just ate half of the cake and is falling from the sugar rush. The moment you leave the exciting situation, you’re guaranteed to crash.”

“That is not true.”

“Oh, isn’t it?” Lucas says with a laugh, raising his eyebrows. The rest of the car is carrying on their own conversation in front of them, but Riley doesn’t mind being left out. She kind of prefers it, liking the pseudo sense of privacy she gets in her conversation with him. “My birthday party, fourth grade. Maya’s birthday party, sixth grade. Your eighth grade dance. New Year’s Eve every year except—,”

The yawn Riley lets out helps accent his argument. She groans in annoyance and he cracks up, shifting from underneath her to drape his arm around the back of the seat behind her.

She feels him pat the top of her head. “It’s okay. It’s charming. Comfortingly familiar.”

“Blah blah blah,” she drones. She feels his hand shift from her head to her shoulder, fingertips lightly brushing her shoulder. She assumes he’s going to move back to his previous position, but when he neglects to do so after a minute she realizes maybe he intends to stay exactly where he is.

Whatever. More room for her. She leans into his side and nuzzles her head against his chest, exhaling a pointed sigh just so it’s clear how content she is to drift right off to sleep if she so chooses.

Farkle leaves the van first as they stop at Quincy, he and Smackle stepping out of the vehicle to say goodbye. Riley glances out the window to watch as they walk towards his front door together, both of them softening considerably from their usual intense, ruthless demeanors to share a long kiss goodnight.

The tender exchange is ruined by Maya and Zay’s catcalling, Farkle flipping them the bird as Smackle jogs back to the van. She slips back into the car without a word, cheeks flushed.

“Sorry to cut your display of affection short, but this bitch is tired and can only last so much longer.” Despite her words, Maya’s tone is far from apologetic.

“It’s fine.” Smackle doesn’t seem particularly bothered, still mentally on the doorstep of her boyfriend’s house. She turns her attention to the two of them. “You know, one of you could move up here. There’s room now.”

“Can’t,” Lucas says plainly. “I’m being used as a pillow.”

“Can’t,” Riley adds, mocking his tone. “I’m using the pillow.”

She elects to reenter the general conversation for the remaining duration of the ride, happy to listen to each of her friends argue about what the best and worst parts of the night were now that they’ve reached its end. Maya and Lucas debate over whether the terrible music or uncomfortable grinding of their classmates was a far worse offense, respectively, maintaining the dispute until the moment they’re back in the familiar golden glow of Adams and parked in the Babineaux driveway.

Smackle bids them all goodnight and heads down the sidewalk, Maya nodding as she helps Zay out of the car. He’s stable enough to walk, but uncertainly, so she elects to keep him propped up with her assistance.

“I’m gonna tuck him in,” she explains, ignoring his grumbling complaints that he’s fine. “See you all on Monday.”

“Are we not hanging out this weekend?”

“I’m planning to sleep for the next forty-eight hours. So, likely no.” She gives both of them a salute, beginning to haul Zay back to his house. “Been real, compatriots.”

Lucas and Riley wait until their friends are safely inside to head in the direction of their own houses. Although the heels are a contributing factor, Riley finds herself dragging her feet mostly because she doesn’t want the night to end quite yet. For all her fatigue in the car ride home, now meandering along with her best friend in the twilight she’s suddenly wide awake.

To her disbelief, he seems to have similar thoughts. At the place where she expects him to split and head across the street he continues to keep pace with her, obviously heading towards her driveway. She stops, spinning to look at him.

“Um, wrong way, Blue Boy,” she teases. “Your house is that way.”

Lucas nods, awkwardly slipping his hands into his pockets. “Oh, well, I just thought I would walk you to your door.”

“You don’t have to.”

“No, no, I think I should,” he argues. “Gentlemanly thing to do.”

Riley rolls her eyes, but it’s hard to fight the smile that sneaks onto her face. “Well, if you insist.”

It’s a predictably short walk, one they’ve taken together a thousand times before. As the two of them stand together on the front stoop of her house and Riley searches her purse for her key, she mindlessly wonders how many small things like this they’ve done together without thinking much of it. How many routines she has with him that she takes for granted, that with college around the corner are now suddenly numbered in a way they’ve never been before.

She forces herself not to dwell on it, choosing to focus on the joy of the night instead. She lifts her head and locks eyes with him, offering him a pleasant smile.

“Thanks for the escort,” she says playfully, then allowing her tone to shift into something more sincere. The urge to nitpick swells and she gives herself a break, gently smoothing the lapel of his tuxedo jacket and straightening his tie. “And for being my date. I had a wonderful time.”

“Me too,” he assures her, mirroring her smile with one of his own. Neither of them make an effort to move away, electing to continue staring at each other. Riley isn’t sure which factor is making her feel so warm—the muggy night air, or the signature lopsided smirk.

The glow of the porch light casts a golden aura onto everything around them, making time feel insignificant and accenting her best friend’s unkempt hair with a soft halo. She resists the usual urge to reach up and smooth it out, directing her attention to how tantalizingly beautiful his eyes look in the light. She forgets they’re green sometimes, so used to them at this point she supposes that it doesn’t even require a second thought on a normal day.

But it’s not a normal day. It’s prom night, but more importantly she feels as though she’s stepped out of the real world and entered the realm of reality that only exists between the two of them. There’s no day or night, just him and the sense of safety and his green eyes that have these glittering little accents of gold depending on the angle the light hits them.

It’s just the two of them, and Riley realizes she doesn’t want that to end. She doesn’t want him to leave. She never, ever wants him to leave.

“Do you want to come in?” she finds herself asking, turning the key in the lock and starting her way back inside her house.

Lucas suddenly looks nervous. He clears his throat, scratching the back of his head. “Oh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to—,”

“Lucas, you’ve been in my house a million times.” She steps into her doorway, turning to give him a pointed look and tilting her head. “Is tonight really going to be any different?”

He seems to consider this. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“My parents are dead asleep. They’re not going to wake up, and besides, despite his best efforts earlier my father is not going to kill you for taking me to prom.”

“He was doing quite an impressive act, then.”

“He’d have to catch you first anyway,” Riley states, raising her eyebrows at him. She can tell she’s swaying him, his expression thoughtful as he glances over his shoulder to his own place. “You’ve snuck into this house more times than either of them will ever know. One more time isn’t going to change anything.”

She feels like she’s holding her breath, fingers fiddling with the chain of her purse. She doesn’t know why she cares so much, but whether or not he chooses to walk through her front door with her suddenly feels like an important test. If only she had any clue what she’s attempting to assess.

Finally, he nods. “Okay.”

Riley beams, stepping into the house and allowing him to follow.

The two of them navigate the moonlit first floor with expert precision, slipping out of their shoes and sliding their way towards the kitchen. Riley flicks on the light as they arrive and goes to pour herself a glass of water, moving as silently as possible.

“Want anything?”

“Nah, I’m good,” he declines, emulating her whisper.

“I don’t know how you’re not thirsty,” she says, shaking her head as she drains half the glass in a few gulps. “All that dancing, I feel like I could drink the entire Atlantic ocean.”

“Well, you wouldn’t do that. You’d die from all the salt pollution.”

She finishes the glass, placing it lightly in the sink and cocking an eyebrow. “Salt pollution? I don’t think that’s what it’s called.”

“You get what I mean. Like, the salt content.” He follows her automatically, continuing their quiet trek through the house and making their way towards the stairs. “Human kidneys are only equipped to process so much salt. So when we drink water of the salt variety rather than, you know, fresh water, it does more to drain our bodies than not drinking at all.”

It’s always an experience to remember how delightfully dorky her best friend is. She hops up a couple of steps and spins to listen to him finish his rant, her chest tightening with the overwhelming feeling of just how much she loves him.

“So if you were to drink the Atlantic to assuage your thirst, you’d only get more dehydrated. You’d probably die before you finished.”

“Thanks for the lecture, you beautiful AP bio student you,” she says fondly, holding out a hand and gesturing him after her. “Come along.”

Lucas hesitates for a moment before taking her hand, allowing her to guide the way up the stairs. Although she’s not too concerned about her parents, Riley is grateful that Auggie is out for the night at his friend Dewey’s and they won’t accidentally be disturbing him. He’s a notoriously light sleeper, and Riley has disrupted his sleep enough times on her own just trying to get a midnight snack.

It’s a relief when the two of them make it to her room, gently the shutting door behind them. With the rest of the world shut out on the other side, Riley feels as though she can breathe again.

Then she looks at him—actually looks at him, and how nicely he cleans up in that tuxedo—and suddenly she’s forgotten how all over again.

“You know what’s crazy?” he says, stepping forward and taking a closer look at her bulletin board. She doesn’t disturb his investigation as she heads over to her dresser, taking off her earrings. She hums for him to continue, letting him know she’s listening. “Every time I come here, it feels exactly the same. Even though you change it like every single year and totally rearrange everything, it doesn’t feel any different to me.”

“Sorry, didn’t realize my compulsive interior design method was so distressing for you. I’ll make sure to get all your stamps of approval next time around.”

Lucas chuckles bashfully, dipping his head down. Riley’s stomach flutters, patting herself on the back for earning another genuine laugh.

“That’s not what I meant. I don’t mind the redecorating. You’re right, that’s way more your preference than mine. I just mean...”

He takes a moment to take in the entirety of the room, soaking it in and letting out a sigh. Riley resists the urge to do the same, but her gaze is solely trained on him.

“Isn’t it strange how everything about the look of a place can change, but when you’re there it feels the exact same way it always has? Like no matter how much the exterior of something transforms with time, all the ways it makes you feel stay the same.”

She doesn’t see how that can be true. She doesn’t see how that statement makes any sense when she’s looking at him, her best friend who she has always loved more than anyone else, and all the sudden he’s making her feel so much more than she thinks she ever has before. Her heart feels caught in her throat, suffocating her with all of the new emotions directed at her best friend that she’s never considered until this moment.

Or maybe, it’s just like her willful ignorance to the locker room chatter about his good looks. Maybe this whole time, she just hasn’t been paying attention.

“I guess people are like that, too,” he continues when she doesn’t respond, too lost in her own head. She shakes off the daze and wanders over to sit on the edge of her bed, forcing herself to give him her undivided attention. He’s already watching her, smiling softly with an evident sense of calm that seems completely unfair. “No matter how much they change on the outside, all that stuff on the inside stays the same.”

“That’s wise,” she says in amusement, compensating for her sudden nerves with wittiness. At least, the limited wit she has on supply. “Who taught you that? Socrates? Confucius?”

He shakes his head, smirk still intact. “You did.”

Riley blinks, trying to catch up with his train of thought. She doesn’t see how she could have taught him anything of substance when half of the time she feels like a complete moron simply trying to make it through the day. The way her friends pick on her from time to time, it’s fairly easy to believe maybe she is one.

But Lucas has never been like that. Lucas has always seen her not only for who she is but who she can be, believing in her even when she doesn’t believe in herself. And she’s always done the same for him without a second thought, a simple enough reminder of the exact conversation he’s talking about.

Riley rises to her feet. They’ve been standing close all night, by situation and by choice, but the small distance between them is heavy with a new tension as she pads over to stand in front of him. It’s thrilling but also scary, carrying an edge of danger with it like electricity. Like if she’s not careful, she might get a nasty shock.

She takes the risk anyway, reaching forward and taking his arm. She places his hand in both of her own, pressing her thumbs against the base of his wrist until she finds his pulse. His heartbeat, grounding her to their timeless reality and this particular moment that is simultaneously one instant and an endless eternity.

“Still good,” she confirms, for the sake of consistency. “Still the best friend I love.”

When she lifts her gaze to meet his, he’s already looking at her. His expression is reminiscent of earlier in the evening, when he first saw her coming down the stairs towards him. Breathless, a little uncertain, but ultimately soft with gentility. Eyes still breathtakingly green, now flecked with silver in the cool shadows of moonlight.

“Do you love me?”

It’s a question they’ve asked each other dozens of times in the last eighteen years. It’s been a joke, a curiosity, a reassurance of importance exchanged multiple times in the vast history of their friendship. But from the quiet sincerity of his voice, it no longer feels like a joke. There’s curiosity, but not of the same nature as the first time she asked him the same. It’s no longer a reassurance of importance—they know how important they are to one another, and Riley doubts anything could ever change that.

This isn’t a question of reaffirming what they already are. This is a question of whether or not they’re something more.

Does she love him?

Riley doesn’t see how she could possibly know the answer. In so much of the shifting sands she’s tread as they grow up, he’s been one of the only pieces of stable ground. He’s a constant, so intrinsic and integral to her understand of the world that she doesn’t see how she could have gotten this far without him. The idea of doing anything to change that seems downright chaotic.

And yet, she knows the answer. She knows it without having to think about it, like the way she knows every vein of their neighborhood and the rhythm of his heartbeat on the pads of her fingertips. It’s unspoken, like so much of their relationship, but clearly understood. She has to wonder if she’s ever known anything else.

Does she love him?

She doesn’t say a word. She opts for the unspoken approach, removing one hand from his wrist to place it on his shoulder as she steals their second kiss.

It’s tentative and uncertain, quick to start for the sake of powering through the bold choice but lingering when it comes time to pull away. She drops back down onto her heels—those stupid five inches on her—when they break, not opening her eyes for fear of what she might have to face if she does. It’s hard to gauge his reaction from sound alone, as it seems as though he’s stopped breathing altogether.

Well, if she’s killed him, she supposes, then she won’t have to worry about what happens next.

It’s only seconds that pass in the midst of her uncertainty, but it feels like forever. She almost backs off from the decision, planning to plead prom-induced insanity just so the electric tension between them will stop crackling so pointedly in the silence.

Lucas breaks it for her. She only gets the breath of an apology out before he interrupts her with a kiss of his own, willingly donating it to her without any thievery involved.

It admittedly takes her a couple of seconds to wrap her brain around it. It takes those few seconds for her mind to reboot and fully comprehend that she’s kissing her best friend—she’s kissing _Lucas—_ but then she’s kissing him back and his hands are cupping her face and it’s like the entire world turns upside down. Or maybe it’s been upside down the whole time and suddenly it’s turned back right-side up, which would explain the head rush and her heart pounding in her ears.

She’s kissing Lucas, and it feels good. It feels _right_.

He breaks from her first, grip still gentle on her cheeks as he catches his breath. She braves the risk of opening her eyes only to find his still closed, still wrapped up in the moment while he catches up with himself and searches for the reason he pulled back in the first place.

He finds it eventually. “Is this okay?”

Of course, he’s checking to see if it’s okay. That she’s okay. The world may have flipped, but he’s still Lucas Friar. He’s still her best friend, more concerned with her comfort and safety than anything else.

“Yeah,” she says, accenting the assurance with another kiss. She giggles in spite of herself, nodding as he eagerly gives her another couple pecks. “Yeah, yeah, it’s okay.”

“Okay,” he repeats. There’s a special kind of euphoria in the fact that she can feel his smile against her lips when he kisses her again, sending a tickle all throughout her body and straight down to her toes.

Then it’s the two of them again, only new and different this time, and Riley is enthralled with how everything is warm. His mouth. His hands. Her stomach. The temperature of the room seems have risen multiple degrees within the last few minutes in some kind of desperate attempt to match how the rest of her is feeling inside and out.

She doesn’t question it. She doesn’t want to question a single thing.

Still, she assumes Lucas must be suffering in that tuxedo. That’s what motivates her to push the jacket off his shoulders, helping him pull his arms from the sleeves and letting it drop to the floor. But then there’s still the button down and the undershirt—prom requires so many layers for boys, she realizes—and she wonders if they’ll even be able to relieve him of the burden of it all before one of them passes out.

Lucas gives her a long kiss, and it translates something she doesn’t think she’s ever understood from a kiss before. Her knees weaken, and she’s pretty sure she’s going to be the one to faint first.

All she can think coherently is that he’s come a long way from their first kiss in eighth grade. She knows he’s had practice since then—both of them have—but whatever message she received from the depth of that last kiss she doesn’t think is in anyway related to amount of experience.

She wonders how strong their mental connection actually is, because he seems to sense her unsteadiness. He makes an effort to guide them towards lower ground while she fixates on loosening his tie. It’s not an easy task with how subtly her hands are shaking from adrenaline. Her patience is also surprisingly thin so she gives up when she widens the loop just enough to pull it over his head, breaking apart momentarily to yank it off of him as they settle onto the edge of her bed.

It musses up his hair even more than usual, but she figures its bound to get messier with the trajectory they’re on. Cowlicks are a problem for later, something she can obsessively fix when she’s not preoccupied with the stirring way his fingers are weaving through her hair after pulling it out of its intricate styling and how strangely specific and wonderfully weird it is that he tastes so much like peppermint.

It’s funny, she recognizes, how she can feel as though she knows every conceivable inch of a person inside and out only to discover how far from the truth it is. That’s what kissing Lucas feels like, exploration, and she’s determined to unearth every last bit of him until she knows it all.

Exploration is what colors each of her touches with a sense of something fresh and novel, from squeezing his shoulders as she has many times before to working her through unbuttoning his shirt. He’s doing the same with her but at a slower pace, harboring a certain hesitancy that irritates her simply because she feels frantic and doesn’t understand how he could possibly not.

It’s nearly a relief when his hand finally finds the zipper of her dress, stitched into the side of the gown and trailing from under her arm down to her waist. She’s worked her way down to the last button on his shirt, and it seems about right that he should start to even the playing field.

She feels his fingers fiddle with the tab, but still nothing happens.

He’s still being her best friend, she reminds herself. The hesitation isn’t indicative of a lack of interest stark from her own—its born out of the same instinct that causes him to handle her so gently, that prompts the desire to reaffirm that she’s perfectly comfortable with the situation in whichever way it progresses.

It’s not irritating so much as endearing. She should be so lucky to have someone in her life who cares enough to put her comfort first.

If he needs the reassurance, she’ll give it to him. She pulls apart from him to do so, nudging their foreheads together and bumping her nose against his.

“It’s okay,” she breathes, brushing their lips together lightly. She tugs one side of his shirt from his pants, smiling over the notion that for all the effort she’s spent relentlessly tucking in his half-tucked shirts, now she’s the one doing the opposite.

Slowly, her dress begins to loosen as he unzips it. Riley can’t help but smile wider, nodding encouragingly as she starts another kiss and wraps an arm around his neck. It doesn’t move much further from there but she decides she’s fine with that, happy to let things progress at their own pace. It’s new territory, and that’s all she was looking for.

His hand slips underneath the fabric of the gown to rest against her back, his fingers pleasantly warm on the small of her back. She can’t remember if it’s always felt so sensitive or if her senses are merely on hyper drive, soaking up every aspect of this new interaction between them.

It’s so lovely, so undeniably welcome, and the connection seems to give Lucas a shot of confidence. She can feel it in the way he kisses her, and it is more than satisfactory. All in all, the exploration only present one tiny problem.

It causes her to think.

Sure, all of this feels great right now, but as her brain starts to take over from the sheer instinct she’s been riding on for the last several minutes she can’t help but fixate on what is going to happen in the morning. What is going to happen on Monday, when the real world resumes again and she’s no longer dreaming in the universe that exists between the two of them?

Lucas is her best friend, and she loves him. She loves him so much, but that’s all it’s ever been. Friendship, more important than anything she’s ever known. He’s never been a boyfriend. Because she’s had a boyfriend, and she knows what happens to those.

And what exactly is she expecting to happen tonight? If she keeps letting this progress the way it’s going, she’s going to stumble into something she has no idea whether or not she’s prepared for. It’s nothing something she wants to rush into with Lucas—it’s not something she wants to rush into in general—but considering her track record so far she’s not making very smart decisions with him and it’s hard to know what she might do next.

It’s not that she doesn’t want to explore that side of things with him. If she’s going completely by how she feels right now, she actually would like to do a lot of that with him as soon as possible. But she’s never, ever considered it a possibility nor contemplated it in a serious, realistic manner, and now that’s she there she has no idea what to do. She has no idea what she wants.

She finds herself pulling away first, her anxiety getting the best of her. But Lucas is far behind her on an earlier page, nowhere near her train of thought. He continues to press kisses into her skin—on her cheek, along her jaw, perfect and sweet and practically intoxicating—and a large part of her wants to fall right back into it. If she could have it her way in that moment, she would fall back into him and stay there for the rest of her life where she always feels safe.

But the logical side of her brain is screaming at her to get a grip. So she searches for an excuse instead.

“My brother,” she says suddenly, stammering out the phrase. It doesn’t make any sense as she blurts it out, but it certainly gets him to pause.

He pulls back from her, meeting her eyes. She’s grateful the frown on his face is purely out of confusion. “Huh?”

“Auggie,” she exhales, lowering her voice. She knows he’s out of the house for the night, but she’s fairly certain he doesn’t. She’s taken aback by how hoarse her voice sounds, clearing her throat anxiously. “He’s a really light sleeper. Sometimes he wakes up just from me walking around my room. I don’t want to… I don’t know if we should—,”

She can’t tear her eyes away from him, trying to read the subtle shifts in his expression in lieu of addressing her curiosities head on. If he’s also recognizing the life-altering ground they’re treading, if he’s only just now absorbing it like she is or if he’s had that on his mind the entire time like her father claims most boys at this age—and forever after, apparently—most certainly do. If she’s going to trigger an avalanche and he’s going to regret all the time and energy they just wasted, remembering that she’s only his geeky neighbor and best friend or not, he definitely doesn’t want to kiss her, let alone do anything else.

It’s a weight off her shoulders when his prominent reaction isn’t disappointment. He takes a moment to fully comprehend the shift in the situation before nodding agreeably. “Okay. Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Riley lets out an exhale, smiling lightly. He mirrors it uncertainly, clearly attempting to navigate their wildly shifting dynamic like she is. She’s trying to figure out what to do next, but the rest of her brain that isn’t fortified by anxiety is absolutely melted.

“I’m going to change,” she says after a long moment, pushing herself to her feet. She wanders over to her dresser and pulls out some pajamas. “Don’t plan on sleeping in this old thing, you know?”

Lucas blinks, nodding again even though his expression is rather blank. Harder to read. He makes to get to his feet as well. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I’ll—,”

A wave of panic shoots through her when she notices him reach for his tie. No matter what happens next, the basic core need of the entire evening hasn’t changed. Hell, it’s been the same for the last few years.

She doesn’t want him to leave.

“You don’t have to go,” she says in a murmur.

He pauses in picking up the tie from the floor, looking up to lock eyes with her.

She hopes he understands that it’s not an invitation. It’s not a suggestion. It’s a demand, a humbling plea that only comes out as a proposal because she’s been so trained for politeness by her parents she doesn’t know how to go about saying it otherwise.

So she channels the rest of the message into their magical mental connection, screaming it from the rooftops in her head and praying that he hears her.

_Stay_.

They hold each other’s gaze for an uncomfortably long time. Then, finally, Lucas relents.

“Okay.”

Riley sighs, closing her eyes and allowing the tension to leave her body. She smiles gratefully, nodding until she disappears out the door to the hall bathroom to change.

She makes an effort to change quickly, considering she has important company and she doesn’t want to keep him waiting after she expressly requested he stay. As she brushes her hair and pulls it back into a quick braid, she finds herself musing that maybe her father was right to be so worried. Maybe Lucas _is_ the one he should’ve been watching like a hawk this whole time.

But then, she knows that’s not right. It can’t be, because she never saw it coming, so there’s no way her father could’ve. Especially considering how greatly it feels like it’s flipped everything around, she doesn’t see how anyone could anticipate something this major from so far away.

When she slips back into her bedroom, Lucas is finishing gathering up his discarded clothes. He’s finished removing his button down and folded it along with the tuxedo jacket neatly on her desk chair, likely tidying up for the sake of doing something to distract from the ambiguity of their new territory.

She still can’t believe her best friend is so drop-dead gorgeous. She resents herself for taking so long to notice.

Taking into consideration the fact that they are still very much within the early stages of the weekend, she doesn’t see why she has to step out of their exclusive universe quite yet. If they’re operating by party rules, she’s got the rest of the night to escape into the haze and enjoy all of the fleeting freedoms until she runs out of time.

She comes to stand beside him, nudging his tiny pile of laundry. “Very tidy.”

“Thanks.”

She tilts her head at him, waiting until he meets her eyes to stand on her toes and kiss him again. He dips down to accommodate her, obviously and blissfully not opposed to spending a little more time in this particular reality with her.

It’s softer, slower this time, and when they pull apart Riley takes his hands and leads him back to her bed. Both of them situate comfortably on the pillows and lay on their sides to face one another, a position they’ve lazed around in so many times but in their flipped world feels more intimate than usual.

For whatever else their right-side up reality has tossed around, it doesn’t take away their ability to talk. Their words are scattered and tired, voices barely above a whisper. They fall into a familiar pattern of conversation, reminiscing about the evening and all of the experiences they’ve accrued in their last year of high school.

Although their mouths are occupied, Riley observes how their hands continue their exploration for them. It’s another freedom she’s entitled to enjoy for the rest of the weekend, the sovereignty to let her fingers brush whichever piece of him she so chooses. Across his face, thumbing the stray freckles on his cheek and feeling the subtle scratch of stubble on his chin. On his hip, forging a small adventure under his shirt to find something she doesn’t normally get to touch. In his hair, finally taking the time to smooth out every one of those persistent cowlicks.

For all of her roaming, Lucas doesn’t do much straying from his chosen spot. One of his hands strays under her t-shirt early in the conversation and stays there, fingertips gently tracing circles into the small of her back. The only true discovery he got to make that evening, one he’s determined to make as familiar as the rest of her now that he’s earned it.

She doesn’t have any complaints. It’s the last thing she acknowledges before she drifts off, the steady and constant rhythm of his touch against her skin. Acting as her beacon, assuring her that no matter what happens come their return to the real world, he’s still going to be there.

He’s still going to be her best friend, regardless of whatever more they may or may not be.

* * *

Although the weekend is supposed to give Riley more time to figure things out, all it does is heighten her already rampant anxieties.

It doesn’t start out all bad. Lucas is still there beside her when she rouses awake in the first golden minutes of sunrise, and she doesn’t dislike the sight of him drowsy and soft-featured from sleep in her bed next to her.

Both of them force themselves awake to sneak him out before her mother wakes up, knowing that getting caught the morning after even though nothing actually happened would be far worse than if they had been thwarted last night. There’s far too much to pick through and explain in a way that makes sense to anybody but them, and Riley supposes if she had to speak frankly on the matter then she wouldn’t be able to outright say _nothing_ happened.

She did kiss him. Quite a bit. Something could’ve happened, might have happened, even though neither of them comment on it in the light of day.

As she’s ushering him out the back door, Lucas leans forward and plants a quick kiss on her forehead. Another unnecessary gesture, but from the way her heart flutters she certainly doesn’t hate it.

There’s still a distinctly warm feeling in her stomach when she returns back to her room, perching in the seat in her window to watch him jog back across the street in his half-tucked tuxedo shirt. She’d been sure to help him redo all the buttons, but somehow had forgotten to make sure his notorious half-tuck job was done properly. Maybe she is losing her grip.

Still, the most prominent feeling in her chest is affection, light and airy and peaceful.

She doesn’t know at what point of the Saturday afternoon her sense of serenity morphs into something more sinister. While she does her best not to think about it, channeling her focus into her last minute schoolwork or spending quality time with her brother, somehow the affection is consumed by the anxiety and broken down into nervous energy. She feels sick when her parents ask her about prom at the dinner table, suddenly not wanting to spend one more second discussing it.

By the time she heads to bed that night, the warmth has turned into a block of ice in her stomach.

Sunday morning is much, much worse. She has a hangover of conflicting emotions, feeling nauseous as she attempts to sort out what her heart is telling her she wants versus what her brain is telling her is the path of lowest risk. She spends a majority of the day hiding under her covers as if that’ll shield her from the impending reality of the school week threatening to crush her. As if the greatest torment isn’t trapped in her own head.

How could she have ever thought kissing her best friend was a good idea? She knows she loves Lucas, but there was absolutely no need to complicate it any more than that. The nature of her feelings is irrelevant, and by testing them in a totally new, far more intimate light she may have very well thrown their entire history into the garbage.

But then, why shouldn’t she love him that way? It’s the question her heart keeps arguing whenever her head finally seems to get the upper hand. He cares about her, so sweetly and sincerely she figures she’s perhaps the luckiest friend in the whole world. He’s never expected her to be anything other than exactly who she is, and even more impressive he loves her because of who she really is. He’s never known her any different, and that’s got to be the truest kind of love there is.

Not to mention, he is so, so pretty. And he’s such a good kisser—she knows this far too well now—and how is she supposed to forget that?

But she knows what happens to relationships. Not everyone is like her parents, harboring feelings for one another until it matured into a beautiful, perfect love and marriage and two darling children. Most people are her Uncle Shawn, finding true love and yet still having to let it go in the end. Most people are her and Charlie, finding enjoyment in one another until one or both of them realize the magical feeling is gone and giving up the relationship without much of a fight. She hasn’t even spoken to her former boyfriend in the last two years, merely exchanging polite smiles in the hallway when necessary and mostly pretending the other doesn’t exist.

She doesn’t want that to happen to her and Lucas. She already lost him once, and she doesn’t ever want to do something to put them in jeopardy again.

That’s the checkmate move her anxiety pulls to end the internal war, solidifying Riley’s decision about what she has to do come Monday when the fleeting freedoms are lost to the weekend. She knows logically it’s the smartest move, the most risk-averse maneuver, and there should be a sense of security in that. She should feel glad she was able to figure it out in time to face it.

Instead, she spends the evening locked up in her room in a confusing, miserable state of melancholy. She slips into bouts of fresh tears more than a couple of times, only crying harder for how stupid she feels that she’s getting so upset in the first place.

By the time she wakes up Monday morning, she feels as though she’s gone through an emotional exorcism. She’s felt every possible spectrum of human emotion in the past seventy-two hours, and all its left her with is a headache and a steeled sense of resolve.

She has to make this right. She has to put things back in order before they spiral out of control and potentially ruin the most important thing in her life for good.

Riley dresses quickly, downs a couple of painkillers, and texts Lucas to request the two of them leave a bit earlier than usual. Whatever she has to say to him, she wants to be able to have the conversation without their friends eavesdropping.

She drops the trash on the curb as she heads out the door, instantly feeling a little lighter when she sees him exiting his house at the same time. There’s a comfortingly familiarity in seeing him back in his usual attire, swapping the suit for jeans and baseball tees. In some ways, she almost think she prefers him that way.

The grin that spreads across his face when he spots her is almost hypnotic. She mirrors it without thinking about it, coming to meet him in the middle of their street.

“Hey,” he greets her. She can’t tell if they’re standing closer than usual because of everything that’s happened, or if he always drifts this close to her and she’s only now noticing it. The flutter in her stomach, nerves or otherwise, is definitely new.

“Hi,” she manages to blurt out, pushing some hair behind her ear. “Thanks for agreeing to leave early.”

“Of course.”

“I just thought we should maybe talk about what happened the other night. You know, all of… that.”

There’s a certain amount of relief in the fact that he’s still smiling. He nods, gripping the strap of his backpack. “Yeah. I wanted to talk to you about that too, actually.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” He continues to smile at her, blinking himself out of it a second later and waving it off. “But you go first, you go.”

Riley laughs uneasily, trying to feel as confident about the situation as he seems to be. “Okay. Sure. Well, um—,”

Now that she’s standing there with him, she doesn’t know where to begin. If he doesn’t seem so conflicted over the whole ordeal, then why should she be? Has all of her obsessing over the past couple of days been over nothing? Why can’t she trust herself for one damn second?

She doesn’t want to lose him. She doesn’t want him to leave. That’s the one thing she trusts, the one thing of which she’s absolutely certain. The one thing that motivates her to put her decision into words.

“The other night was… I mean, it was nice.”

Lucas tilts his head, smile softening to a smirk. “I didn’t hate it.”

Riley doesn’t allow her brain the chance to seize his reply and start spinning a thousand different theories out of it. She knows what she needs to say, she doesn’t need to overanalyze anything. It was not thinking that got her into this mess, and she’s going to use it to get out of it.

“Certainly different for us, though.” She hesitates, clearing her throat and trying to maintain her resolve. “Not to say that change is a bad thing or anything. I just think that, well, we’ve got a pretty good thing going for us already, don’t we?”

Lucas blinks, expression shifting slightly. It’s hard to read. “I guess.”

“You’re my best friend.” She can’t look at him. She turns her gaze to the asphalt under their feet instead. “You’re my best friend, and I want us to always have that. Always be there for each other, you know? I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize that.”

His silence is deafening. She glances at him out of the corner of her eyes, catching the way his brow is furrowed and he’s pressing his lips together. She’s seen him make that expression a dozen times, but she’s never quite understood what it means. It’s like the frown he used to wear all the time in middle school when he was so angry, but it’s not fueled by rage. It’s quieter than that, softer somehow but equally as guarded.

For how well she knows all of his other subtle ticks, the particular emotion of this crinkle between his eyebrows has always evaded her.

“We’re just so good the way we are,” she explains quickly. She reaches out and gently touches his arm, hoping to clarify that her decision stems entirely from keeping him in her life the only way she knows how. “I just feel like trying to mess with that, it could make things more complicated. You and me, we’re best friends. That’s never going to change.”

It feels like an infinity of silence until he lifts his gaze to meets hers. After a moment, he offers a tight nod. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re probably right.”

He shrugs away from her touch. Before she has the chance to analyze the aftermath of the discussion, Isadora Smackle emerges from her house with the family recycling bin and spots them in the street.

“Riley? Lucas? Are you both headed to school already?”

She glances at Lucas, hoping he’ll give her a clue as to how she should respond. She was hoping to continue this walk alone, but Smackle is hard to shake off at times. Miraculously, emotionally turbulent moments like this one are often the times she tends to show up most.

Lucas isn’t looking at her. He’s facing the other end of the street, almost as if he’s purposefully avoiding her eyes. He blinks a couple of times, swallowing and clearing his throat.

“Yeah, we were just leaving.”

“Oh, excellent. I’ll join you. Let me grab my belongings.”

She jogs back up her driveway. Riley feels the moment slipping out of her control, far before she’s had the chance to assess how it turned out.

“Hey, you said you had something to talk about too.” She grabs his hand again, turning him slightly to face her. “What did you want to say?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he mutters. He still won’t meet her eyes.

She feels it sharp in her heart when he slips from her fingers, starting the walk towards school without her.

* * *

For all her efforts to keep him in her life, it feels as though Riley has succeeded in pushing him right out of it.

They’re perfectly cordial for the rest of the school year, and there are moments like graduation where they seem to be alright. When she emerges through the school doors with Maya into the sunlight and the endless sea of seniors in dark navy robes and their parents, it only takes seconds for her typical magnetism to kick in and for her to spot him amongst the crowd.

They lock eyes, and within moments they’re embracing. She feels lighter than air as he picks her up and spins her around, swelling with pride at everything they’ve accomplished and how far they’ve come and all the places they’re going to go next.

Then her feet hit the ground, and reality comes back into play. Another shared look between them phases through about a hundred different emotions before it lands back on their recent usual, a distant, stilted friendliness that feels much colder than the two of them are supposed to be.

She made them that way. Whatever she did in her attempts to preserve their dynamic, it seems as though she’s damaged it instead. It’s broken beyond repair, manifesting into a growing, suffocating void as the school year melts into summer.

It’s the only promise to her he fails to keep in all the time they’ve known each other. The only one she desperately believed they would never break—to never lose each other again.

As much as she wants to dedicate all her energy into fixing it, there’s simply too much else fighting for her attention. College is right around the corner, and it seems as though there’s far more preparation to be done than hours in the day. It’s an unpleasant reminder of that endless march of time as she and her parents pick apart her room, boxing things up and deciding what’s going to stay and what’s going with her.

None of it feels as though it matters much. Her most treasured things can’t come with her anyway.

Each of her friends and family absorb whatever time she has left, and the season breezes by without waiting for her to catch up. Before she knows it, August has arrived, and one by one her friends leave their comfortable nest of Adams street and fly away to wherever their next adventure is going to be.

She’s not very good at hiding her melancholy. Topanga notices her fatigue as she sits at the kitchen table, thumbing through the NYU course catalogue.

“Well, with how thrilled you look perusing your options, I’m sure you’re in for a wonderful, exciting freshman year.”

Riley forces a bombastic grin, earning a look from her mother in response. “Better?”

“Nothing like a fake smile to lift the spirits. If any boy at school tells you to smile, remember that you have the full legal right to destroy him.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very lawyerly thing to advise.”

Topanga shares a laugh with her, washing her hands and wiping them on a dishrag as she sets to preparing dinner. “Everyone already off to school? Are you the last one?”

“Maya’s gone. California girl. Smackle leaves in a couple days, and I think Zay left yesterday. I don’t know about Lucas.”

“He has to be leaving soon. Texas isn’t an easy drive.” Topanga pauses, obviously debating whether or not she wants to broach the topic. “I haven’t seen him around much the last few weeks. Is everything okay?”

“Yes.” Riley’s tone is too defensive to be casual and she knows it. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

When Topanga comes and settles into the chair next to her, she knows she’s in trouble. No one is better at interrogations than her mother—it’s why the practice loves her so much—and she has the feeling she’s not going to get out of this one without facing the problem she’s been avoiding for the entire summer.

“He’s your best friend, isn’t he? Seems a bit odd that he wouldn’t be around at all when you only have a few more days to see each other.”

Riley cracks far more quickly than she hoped. She finds herself recounting the whole ordeal to her mother, doing her best to omit any details involving the sneaking in and out that they definitely weren’t supposed to be doing anyway. When she gets to prom and has to leave out very large chunks of pertinent information, she starts to realize maybe her mistake has been insisting that she and Lucas were always simply friends. Considering how much she has to rewrite in the narrative to keep it sounding that way, it doesn’t seem so convincing anymore.

“And I thought I was doing what was best, trying to keep things from possibly affecting our friendship.” She runs her hands through her hair, hating the pain forming in the back of her throat that she knows means she’s close to crying. She’s done enough of that over him the last couple of months. “But I’m pretty sure I just ruined everything entirely.”

Topanga absorbs the information, tapping her thumb against her chin thoughtfully. “Well, there’s definitely no simple answer to this. There never is when there’s a whole other person with their own feelings and opinions involved. Not to mention, I’m fairly sure you’re not telling me absolutely everything there is to know about it.”

The two of them exchange a look. Riley dips her head down, cheeks flushing.

“That said, there’s really only one thing you can do. Regardless of any other information I may or may not know.”

She raises her head again. “What?”

“Talk to him. Reach out, in whatever way that may be. I don’t know what he expects of the situation, but cold silence on either end of the spectrum of communication isn’t going to help anybody. Don’t let him leave for four months without letting him know that you still care about him. That you’re still there.”

It’s a tough pill to swallow, but she knows her mother is right. Inaction is causing just as much damage as doing the wrong thing, potentially maybe more. If she wants a chance of getting things back to normal between them—even though she’s not sure what normal even is anymore—she has to make it clear that she wants that with him to start.

Even with this understanding, she’s not spurred into action until the next afternoon when she sees him and his mother packing up the car. She’s officially run out of time, and no matter how much she detests it on principle, he’s leaving her behind.

It’s now or never. She can either continue to do nothing and let him go without a fight, or she can swallow her pride and give it one last effort.

The trunk of his car slams shut, audible even from her bedroom. It sounds like an explosion.

Riley tears out of her room and down the stairs, wrenching the front door open. She doesn’t bother to waste time pulling on shoes, sprinting out onto her lawn and coming to a stop at the curb.

“Lucas!”

He whips around to face her, evidently surprised to hear her calling for him. So much of her aches looking at him, heavy with regret and loneliness and a little bit of something more. He meets her eyes, both of them frozen in anticipation of what’s supposed to happen next. Considering how much everything has shifted back and forth between them, neither of them have any idea.

All she knows is that he’s her best friend. She’s been her best friend for as long as they’ve lived on this street together, and she’s not going to let that change because they go to live in different states. It’s not going to change because she’s afraid of what else they might be.

It’s not going to change.

Riley darts off the curb and runs to meet him, colliding with him and wrapping him in a bone-crushing embrace. Hoping that for how frayed it is, some part of their unspoken connection still works well enough to get the message across.

She sighs in relief when she feels him hug her back, willing herself not to do something stupid like cry.

She doesn’t know how long they stand there by his car, her feet burning on the sun-warmed concrete. His mother emerging from the house with her keys and giving them an amused look is the only hint that perhaps it’s time to pull apart.

“Have so much fun,” Riley commands into his shoulder, disentangling herself from him for the sole purpose of looking into his eyes. She wants him to really listen to what she has to say. “You are going to do so amazingly. And I expect to hear all about it. Every detail.”

They don’t talk about any of the uncertainties that have bloomed in the cracks of their shifting relationship. There’s not enough time, and Riley isn’t sure she’s ready to confront them in a way that would actually alleviate the situation anyway.

But the silence is broken. The smile on his face is genuine when he nods her an assurance, and slowly that ice that has taken her stomach hostage begins to thaw. Somehow, in whatever way, they’re going to be okay.

“Talk to you soon?”

She nods eagerly, reaching forward and giving his wrist a tight squeeze. Taking one more quick helping of his heartbeat, hoping the memory of it will be enough to hold her over. “I’ll be here.”

They exchange one more hug, Riley hopping up onto the sidewalk as he heads to the passenger side of the car. She stands in his driveway and sees them off, waving until they disappear down the street and out into the rest of his life. The same path she’ll be taking herself in just a few days.

Suddenly, her uncertainty melts away with the ice and the realization hits her like a ton of bricks. It’s only in the absence of her best friend that she sees her feelings for exactly what they are. Despite the anxiety and confusion, there’s never been a shred of doubt over how she actually feels about him.

She loves Lucas, of course she does. He’s her best friend, and that’s always been and always will be true.

The key is that she’s in love with him. She’s genuinely, deeply, profoundly in love with Lucas Friar.

In hindsight, it’s hard to think of a time when she wasn’t.


	7. nineteen ( riley )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Holidays are joyful,  
>  There’s always something new.  
> But every day’s a holiday  
> When I’m near to you._
> 
> \-- The Carpenters, "Merry Christmas, Darling"

The first lesson Riley learns after high school comes before she even heads off to New York, and it’s one that’s only useful in hindsight—ignorance is truly bliss.

She has no idea how she managed to go so long ignoring her feelings for Lucas, but now that she’s acknowledged them it’s like she can’t go a second without being consumed by them. Sure, there’s plenty of stuff to distract her in the next few months after he leaves her shell-shocked in his driveway with the weight of her realization. She’s got the move of her own from the suburbs of Philadelphia to the hustle and bustle of the concrete jungle, eager to jump right into NYU campus life. There’s classes to focus on and new friends to make, and she pours all her energy into the transition in an effort to make it as meaningful and painless as possible.

Still, despite how much mental space all that takes up, every inch of it that’s left is dedicated to her beautiful best friend. Her best friend who she’s always loved, only now that word has an entirely new depth to it that she has no idea how to wrap her head around.

It’s amazing how suddenly everything from their history together takes on a new shade in her memory. All those late night conversations, all the little facts she’s been storing away about him in the back of her mind. The way her chest would tighten any time he made a point of touching her regardless of how casual, and the way her cheeks would flush whenever her classmates talked suggestively about him in the locker room. The reason she wanted him to be her first kiss, the reason she’d scale a rickety shed just to sneak into his room, the reason she spends so much time wanting to tuck in his shirts and fix his cowlicks.

Everything used to have a different explanation—platonic fondness, a naturally protective nature, embarrassment for the locker room talk—and now it all comes down to one very simple fact.

She loves Lucas Friar. She loves him.

She loves him, and she can’t even remember the way of the world when she didn’t.

Although part of her wants to avoid the reality of the situation and hide in her dorm room for the rest of her sad, miserable life, she knows that she has to do something about the situation. She can’t keep pretending that everything is the same. Although the idea of ruining their relationship entirely is terrifying, she doesn’t see how she could screw it up any worse than she already has in the last few years. They’ve been through about every skirmish and cold snap a pair of best friends ought to have, so she knows if she decided to tell him he would hear her out.

And they’d work it out. They always do.

Besides, she can’t help but think that maybe she’s not creating something out of nothing. Any dynamic is a two-way street, and Lucas has been every bit as present in their relationship as she has. Those shared looks in class or at neighborhood barbecues would be meaningless without his eyes meeting her own at exactly the right time. Their tendency to rescue one another wouldn’t hold water if he didn’t risk life and limb to come to her aid the same way she did for him.

Mostly, she can’t stop thinking about the way he kissed her. Not just once, but multiple times. He kissed her with intent, with such soft but pointed sincerity. The kind of kiss that made her feel things she’s never, ever felt before and doesn’t think she’ll ever experience again so long as she’s holding back the truth.

You can’t kiss like that and not have it mean something. That’s what she tells herself, at least, when she’s up late at night running laps in her head over how her world has turned upside down around her.

The moment Lucas informs her of when he’ll be coming home for winter break, two days after her own return, Riley makes the choice to tell him. When they reunite for winter break after their first semester away, she’s going to look him in the eyes and tell him she’s in love with him. For better or for worse.

Despite how much she intends to practice the confession—it is, after all, probably the most important one she’ll ever make in her life and she can envision the thousands of ways she’s going to mess it up—it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to prepare. Not because she isn’t sure of her feelings, but more so because she’s felt them so long and so persistently she can’t figure out how to make it clear that it’s news. She doesn’t know how to explain it with enough bravado to match how important it feels choked up in her lungs and pounding in her heart.

How do you tell someone you love them when you’ve been telling them so your entire lives?

* * *

As it turns out, all of her stressing over the right way to make a declaration of love ends up pointless anyway. Because when they finally meet up the first week of winter break, the first thing he does after releasing her from their bear hug is inform her that he has a brand new girlfriend.

She figures she must have gone numb, because it’s surprisingly painless when they met up with Zay and Smackle and she gets to hear all about her. Her name is Olivia, and she’s a biology major at Texas A&M. They live in the same building and met at a freshman mixer before stumbling upon each other in their intro biology course, bonding over some science joke Lucas explains that Riley doesn’t understand in the slightest. But she laughs along anyway, because the way he can’t even start the pun without cracking up is the cutest thing she’s ever seen and his laughter is infectious in the best kind of way.

Olivia is absolutely gorgeous, tall and tan with a perfect heart-shaped face. Even just from pictures she radiates bubbly charm, and when Zay comments how nice her smile is Riley can’t help but nod in agreement. Lucas goes on to note how nice she is, thoughtful and perceptive and whip smart, and she believes him without a second thought. It’s easy to believe him considering how his eyes shine when he talks about her.

Most of all, Riley is astounded by how simple it is to be happy for him. How quickly she buries her own feelings deep down inside her once again, because the smile on his face is so easy and lovely she can’t imagine upending that joy with some stupid, irrelevant revelation that came far too late.

The numbness persists as long as Lucas is still in town, the way he’s practically glowing reminding her of why she’s staying silent. It isn’t until the new year comes and goes and they’re heading back to their separate universities that the reality of the situation hits her like a ton of bricks.

She’s grateful she took the chance to get back a couple of days before her roommate. The first night she’s back at NYU and removed from the disarming comfort of home, all of the emotion she had been shoving down with a smile for weeks escapes her at once. She falls into it full tilt, turning up her heartbreak playlist until it’s loud enough to drown out her sobs to anyone passing down the hall.

Once again, she’s proven to herself how little she knows or understands about the world. Of course life wasn’t going to wait around for her to come to her senses, and neither was Lucas. Sure, maybe he had feelings for her once upon a time—if that—but she blew that the moment she told him they were better off friends. She had him in her grasp for one fleeting moment, and she let him go. 

Riley wallows in the depression of her missed chance right up until the evening her roommate gets home. Then, she forces herself to move on from it. No more crying. No more wistful thoughts about letting the cat out of the bag. No more humoring the notion that she and Lucas are anything more than friends.

Ironic, she thinks, how back in the day all she wanted was the comfort of knowing she and Lucas would never change. Now, it’s practically a chore to maintain that mindset.

* * *

While the initial heartbreak of missing her chance with Lucas was painful enough, Riley quickly realizes that the alternative she’s boxed herself into is much, much worse. Because while she can be happy for him and support his relationship with everything in her, she can’t make her own feelings evaporate. And her other option is removing him from her life entirely, which she’ll never do again. It’s not even a question.

Which leaves her with the gruesome existence of pining. Lots and lots of pining.

The first few months of it are the worst as she attempts to reconcile her former understanding of Lucas with this new one. This version of her best friend who always felt like hers in some unspoken, intrinsic way that now belongs unequivocally to someone else. This version of her best friend who is suddenly unattainable in a way he’s never been to her before, but who gets to continue acting as though nothing has changed between them. Because to him, they’re the same as they’ve always been.

She’s just Riley, his goofy neighbor and best friend. So he gets to enjoy the warm familiarity of their interactions without overthinking every single word or worrying if he’s overstepping his boundaries or debating how much chaos would ensue if he just opened his mouth and blurted out his true feelings every single time they have a conversation. Because he doesn’t have those feelings, not for her, so it’s a non-issue.

Riley cannot begin to imagine such emotional freedom. She’d be furious with him if she weren’t so disgustingly infatuated with him.

Part of the reason it’s so tough to grapple with is because she feels as though she has to shoulder it alone. She doesn’t want to burden anyone else with her problems, and so many of their friends are shared that she knows telling the wrong person could create more issues than solutions.

Zay is far closer to Lucas than her, so he’s out of the question. Smackle is a dear friend but certainly not one she trusts with something so emotional, especially considering the big mouth her boyfriend has. She knows there’s not one secret Smackle learns that Farkle doesn’t inevitably absorb as well, and having both of them know is far too much of a risk. Loose lips sink ships, and Farkle has the loosest lips Riley’s ever met.

She knows she could tell Maya. She’s arguably her closest friend after Lucas—perhaps now her best friend, since her relationship with him has morphed into some strange, nameless entity that she can hardly begin to describe let alone label—and Maya’s loyalty to her has always been stronger than anyone else. But it’s been harder to talk with the three hour time difference, and she’s having such an amazing time in Los Angeles with her like-minded creative classmates. She doesn’t want to bog her down with her drama any more than she has to, especially something as trivial as unrequited feelings.

Besides, when they’re at their separate schools it’s almost possible to pretend the grief doesn’t exist. As long as he and his updated relationship status are out of sight, they’re out of mind. She only has to stomach it in the moments where they have their weekly call, or when someone else brings it up, or every day when she gets another text from him and she keeps reminding herself she needs to remove the heart emoji from his contact name even though it’s been there since she got her first mobile device.

It’s unexpectedly Farkle who acts as the straw that breaks the camel’s back when they’re home for spring break.

The two of them and Zay were the only three nearby enough to fathom coming back for the week, as Maya claims it’s not worth the airfare for such a short amount of time, and Smackle is preoccupied with research opportunities. Lucas opts to participate in his campus’s alternative spring break program working at animal shelters, and although it stings that she’s missing time with him again she knows how perfect such an opportunity is for him. She makes him promise to send photos of all the animals as soon and often as possible.

So it’s just the three of them when Farkle lets it slip in some weird giggly bro moment with Zay that Lucas is no longer a virgin, combatting the latter’s insinuation that he’s the most experienced of all of them when they think Riley is focused on paying the cashier for her lunch.

It’s a strange conversation to be somewhat eavesdropping on considering she doesn’t want to think about what sort of experience either of her friends might be having, especially since Farkle’s likely involves _another_ childhood friend and that’s too awkward for her to even begin to picture. Evidently they knew she’d view it that way seeing as they waited until she was distracted to broach the topic, but it’s the offhand comment about her best friend that makes her sick to her stomach, shooing any appetite she had far away.

Although she’s able to push the thought from her mind while she enjoys the rest of her afternoon with her friends, the notion of it lodges itself in her brain and creeps up on her as the days go by and her return to school comes closer.

She knows that at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. Virginity is a social construct—her mother taught her that early on and taught her well—and as long as he’s being conscientious and safe, there’s nothing truly terrible that could come of such a change. Lucas is making his own choices, and she’s always respected his choices. She knows he doesn’t make them lightly.

But for whatever reason, her mind has seized this new fact and won’t let it go. It’s always there taunting her in the back of her mind, making her miserable and then making her frustrated for being so miserable about it in the first place. It’s a vicious cycle, made even worse by the fact that she can’t talk to anyone about it because she feels as though she can’t talk to anyone about anything involving him anymore.

Finally, upon her return to school for the rest of her semester, she cracks. When she goes to lunch with her wiser and older uncle Josh and he asks her how her freshman year has gone, all of the repressed emotion seems to flood out of her at once in a way that is neither intelligible nor particularly charming.

She’s grateful that Josh doesn’t seem to care about any of that. She’s grateful that when she bursts into tears in the entryway of his apartment he forgoes their city lunch plans entirely, opting to order in something instead. Then he sits her on the couch and makes her start from the beginning, recounting the last year and a half of confusion and pining and the entire lifetime of friendship that built up to it in the first place.

Regardless of what he has to say about it all, there’s a certain amount of freedom in the simple act of saying it all. Of admitting out loud how deeply she loves her best friend, lamenting how unfair it is that she’s had him with her all this time yet figured it out just a moment too late. How even though it doesn’t matter the idea of him being with someone else makes her skin crawl, how it’s even worse because Olivia seems like the sweetest person and if anything she should be happy for him. How she feels like the absolute worst person in the world and, even more pointedly, the worst best friend because of the resentment she has seeping through the cracks in her heart.

Josh listens intently to each of her points, nodding along even when her tears make her words nearly incomprehensible. He waits until she’s finished to start compiling his thoughts, obviously handling the situation with care as he usually does. Cory has always called his youngest brother a true observer—after some comment about being a smart ass, typically—and Riley is praying that some of his natural wisdom will be able to put some of the piece of her life back into working order.

“Well, let me first say that you’re right about the meaninglessness of virginity,” he says. When Riley huffs he nudges her knee pointedly. “I’m serious. I mean, sure, it meant something in the 1950s or whatever other prehistoric era you want to think about, but so did keeping women barefoot in the kitchen. Believe me, Riles, people are having sex all the time, every day, and nine times out of ten none of it means anything in the long run. It certainly doesn’t impact your relationship with him in any way, regardless of what it turns out to be.”

Even though she knew it to be true, it is a relief to hear someone else give her this reassurance. She takes a deep breath, allowing the air to fill her lungs and start rebuilding some of the rubble inside of her.

Josh gives her a sympathetic smile. “Besides, from what you’ve told me, it sounds like he at least really does care about this girl. Even more so if they’ve been together for over six months, which I’m assessing is more so the reason you’re upset.” When she tears up again and rushes to wipe her eyes, Josh reaches forward and pats her knee. “And I feel you. It sucks, I mean it really truly sucks when the person you like doesn’t like you back. That’s the truth no matter how young you are when you learn it.”

She can’t believe how nice it is to have someone understand what she’s feeling. She can’t believe she forgot that her uncle really does exist right within her reach and would put down whatever he’s got going on to help her. Friendships are important, but family is stronger than anything. She’s lucky that her uncle Josh is both.

Riley promises herself not to take advantage of that fact, but she also makes a promise not to get so caught up in the negatives. She has a wonderful, tight knit family. She has an amazing array of friends, each exquisitely unique and talented and deserving of the entire world. She has her own aspirations and talents to pursue, and she’s not going to waste one more second dwelling on the things she cannot control.

More than anything else, she still has Lucas Friar. Sure, maybe not in the way she wants right that moment, but her uncle is right in that the importance of the relationship they share doesn’t change regardless of what else does around them. That much has always been true.

The rest, she decides, is like silly elementary school dares and pretend acting kisses. Noise to fill the question mark shaped cracks in their relationship that will maybe never get a definitive answer. That she’ll have to be okay with, for better or for worse.

With her positive thinking mindset running on full speed, she aims to make it for the better.

* * *

The second year of accepting her new reality goes much more smoothly than the first.

Maybe it just takes some growing pains, but Riley feels way more confident launching into sophomore year. She’s enthusiastic about her classes, she’s finally acclimated to the New York hustle and bustle. She has a brand new group of friends yet manages to balance them effectively with the old, living by the old Girl Scout motto she and Maya spent two years chanting until Riley opted out to help babysit Auggie when her parents need to take off for work and her bombshell friend found a new hobby to throw herself into as she does every few months.

It’s impressive, she has to think, how the human mind can adjust to so much change.

Even more impressive is how she’s gone almost an entire year without seeing Lucas Friar.

Not on purpose, of course, but the way their summer schedules shook out didn’t allow for the chance to reunite. He decided to stay in Texas for a May semester program which involved working on a ranch with horses (“ _actual_ horses, Riley, can you believe that?”), and by the time he got back Topanga had already corralled the whole family on a cross country road trip that devoured the rest of her summer.

Her mother claimed she had been planning the venture for years and it just so happened that this year was the time it worked out. Riley is fairly certain the trip was more spontaneity than anything else and her mother is simply less patient than she likes to appear.

In a way, however, it’s sort of a blessing. Not only is seeing so many parts of the country when she’s only ever really existed on the eastern side of the states an experience, but the cold separation seems to have actually done more good for her relationship with Lucas than harm. They still text all the time, and they video chat often enough it doesn’t even feel like she hasn’t seen him in months. Just as she always hoped, evidence proves that she and Lucas are a force to be reckoned with, and their friendship is here to stay.

The caveat is that the longer they’re apart, the more daunting the idea of a reunion seems to become. As winter break creeps closer and closer, Riley finds herself more and more nervous about what it’s going to be like when they’re finally back in the same state for more than ten minutes and she has to look him in the eyes again. Those stupid, distractingly beautiful green eyes.

It’s like faking sick to get out of school. The more you do it, the harder it gets to go back.

When they’re simply talking over video chat, the technological barrier acts as a nullifier to those eyes. They’re not nearly as dazzling when downgraded to poor connection pixilation.

“I’m not saying you have to get one,” Lucas says, on the call with her as he absentmindedly shuffles around his room getting ready. “I’m just saying that if you don’t have a tiny tree in your dorm, then you can’t claim you’re the arbiter of Christmas or whatever it is you used to say all the time.”

Riley can’t help but crack up. She crosses her ankles, leaning back comfortably against the buddy pillow situated on her bed behind her. “Okay, for starters, I now live in an apartment. Not all of us are resident assistants so we can get free university housing for the rest of our college careers.”

“Um, I do it to help the students.”

“Blah blah blah,” she sings over him, earning a smirk in response. Even pixelated, that smirk is still pretty darn charming. “And for your information, the official title was Grandmaster of Winter Holiday Cheer. I tried to be inclusive, you know.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” She hears his desk drawer slide open, and his eyes drop from the screen to rummage through its contents. “My bad, grandmaster.”

Honestly, Riley prefers it when their calls occur in these haphazard ways. She likes being carried around his room as he progresses through whatever he’s doing at the moment, or seeing the campus pass by in glimpses behind him as he walks to class. She doesn’t mind the lapses in eye contact or occasional lulls in conversation. It feels more like actually being there with him, like she belongs in his world even if she’s not there physically.

It’s also fun to have the new friends populating his world jump in at a moment’s notice. She always loves that part. Even Olivia—she’s been on the call a couple of times, and Riley isn’t even hard-pressed to admit she is very, very sweet. Besides, any girlfriend that is so chill about their boyfriend calling their best female friend from home almost as often as he calls her has to be a keeper. Riley appreciates that Olivia doesn’t seem the controlling type or consider her a threat.

Of course, Riley knows she isn’t one anyway. But it’s nice to know there’s no drama to be had between them.

“I take my craft very seriously, thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Lucas puts effort into balancing the phone against his bookshelf, lightly sticking his tongue out of his mouth as he concentrates. She’s pretty sure he has no idea he’s doing it, considering she’s seen that look more times than she can count on one hand. The camera tilts to the side to compensate, Lucas only backing off when he’s satisfied with the layout. “So you know what I’m doing today, what are you up to this afternoon?”

It’s hard not to remember what he’s up to today. He’s running around fixing himself up for his Saturday afternoon date. Although she can’t actually see the motion in full Riley can tell he’s focusing on buttoning his shirt, occasionally glancing up to look at the mirror on his wall. It’s cute to see him so concerned with his appearance, especially since for as long as she’s known him she cannot think of a time where he didn’t look good. Even in the years where she wasn’t exactly paying attention.

Well, maybe the Haircut That Must Not Be Named of fifth grade. But he was wearing his cap so often at that point anyway, no one even noticed it after the first couple days of necessary elementary humiliation.

“Shopping with Josh,” Riley explains, twirling the end of her ponytail between her fingers. “We’re trying to knock out all of the family presents today. So I’m focusing on my mom, because I prepped for Auggie weeks ago and my dad is the easiest person in the world to shop for. I’ll walk out with fifteen things for him and one for my mom that I know she’ll only appreciate because it’s from me, not because she actually likes it.”

“Yeah, Topanga does seem like a tough one.” Lucas exhales, unintentionally showing his pre-date jitters even though this is probably his one thousandth outing with Olivia. It’s quite endearing. “Honestly, those people are the worst. You know, where you know they’ll like anything you get them because it came from you, but you want to get them a gift they’ll actually like and have no idea where to start.”

Riley wonders if she should burst his bubble and inform him that he is, in fact, one of those people. Her best friend is the epitome of what he just described, which is why all of her birthday presents to him over the last nineteen years have taken weeks of prior consideration before purchase or creation.

Maya always used to make fun of her, laughing at how much time she wasted obsessing over it. Considering she just gave him a coupon each year that offered him one day free of ridiculous nicknames, her attitude wasn’t exactly surprising. Half the time, she didn’t even actually follow the guidelines of the coupon.

“They are indeed,” Riley agrees, opting to save that identity crisis discussion for a later time. “Any of your Texas crew like that?”

“Thank God, no.” He adjusts his sleeves, rolling them up to the elbow. Riley is grateful she’s not there in person to receive the full blast of how attractive that look probably is. She’s much safer hundreds of miles away. “Marissa and Sanjay are the easiest people in the world to buy for. Cece could receive a bag of coal and find a way to make it the best gift she’s ever received. Alex literally just gave us a specific list of all these organizations they wants us to donate to, which hey, works for me.”

“How impactful.” She nods in approval. “The Grandmaster of Winter Holiday Cheer approves.”

“I’ll be sure to let them know.”

Riley rolls onto her side, propping her head on her arm. “What are you getting Olivia?”

Lucas side-eyes her, but she can tell from the light smile that crosses his lips that he definitely already has it all planned out. “That’s classified information.”

“What? No! I’m the best friend, I have the right to know.”

“I don’t remember that being a clause in the best friendship contract,” he teases, grinning at her as he reaches for the phone.

“It absolutely is. Best friends have full rights and access to all information regarding the significant other, particularly fun, cheer-filled activities such as gift-giving. As your best friend, it is my God-given right to know what you’re getting Olivia for Christmas.”

“Tell you what,” Lucas says, raising his eyebrows at her. “You get a significant other, then we’ll be even. And I’ll tell you what I’m getting Olivia when I can exchange it for the same level of information.”

Although she’s good most of the time, it’s small comments like these that always seem to send a shot of panic through her veins. Riley is a trained expert on avoiding the topic of her romantic life with him. She can’t risk the possibility that one question leads to another and all the sudden she’s blurting out the truth, the fact that the only guy she’s been remotely interested in dating since tenth grade just so happens to be him and she may or may not be entirely over these feelings.

Despite the fact that he is very much off the market. Despite the fact that she has trained herself to be very, very okay with that. Despite the fact that they’re best friends and always will be, she knows ultimately for the best.

Yeah, overall, it’s best to just avoid the topic entirely.

Thankfully, the opportunity comes without her even wishing for it, a battered orange textbook catching her eye on his shelf as he turns around. “Is that the horse encyclopedia?”

“Oh, yeah!”

His face lights up as he whips back around to pull it off the shelf. Suddenly, the camera is shifting to normal mode instead of selfie, and she’s staring at the worn and torn encyclopedia he’s been carrying around since she checked it out for him at the library all those years ago. She still has no idea how he ended up getting a copy for himself.

“Riley, this thing is so legit. I mean, I knew it was considering how much I’ve read it. But I brought it along on my Maymester in the spring and it was so helpful to have around. My professor was really impressed I thought to bring it along.”

Warmth pools in her stomach. When the camera flips back to selfie mode and she sees how wide his smile is, it spreads even further until she’s fuzzy all over. “I’m impressed it hasn’t disintegrated at this point.”

“Yeah, well, there’s nothing a little duct tape can’t fix.” He slides the book back onto the shelf, grimacing slightly as the tell-tale sound of creaking indicates the duct tape isn’t fixing all its problems. “Anyway, it’ll be fine I’m sure. I keep it around more for the sentimentality than anything else.”

Riley refuses to let her brain latch onto that.

“But I’m honestly surprised you’re worried about Topanga over all else. I figured you’d be freaking out about Secret Santa and having to shop for them so last minute.”

“What do you mean?”

“You set the website to send us our people today, didn’t you?” Lucas blinks at her. “This afternoon, I thought. You’re always all about the big reveal.”

The memory comes back to Riley so violently she shoots straight up, mouth dropping open. “Oh my God! You’re right!”

“Wow, I can’t believe you forgot.” He hums disapproval, wagging his finger at her. “Bad showing, grandmaster.”

“Oh, hush.” She can’t help the excitement that bubble up inside her. She wiggles in place, bouncing her legs in front of her. “Ah, you’re so right! Hopefully it’ll send out when we’re shopping and I’ll be able to knock it all out in one go.”

“Maybe so.”

Lucas is fixing his hair, using the phone camera in lieu of a mirror and evidently distracted from their conversation. Riley finds herself similarly compromised—maybe she’s not as protected by the technological wall as she convinced herself she is. She resists the urge to tell him that his efforts are futile, that she’s been dying and trying to tidy his hair her entire life and never found success.

He licks his lips, squinting slightly to focus, and a weird flutter blooms in her chest. All she can get her brain to comprehend is the notion that Olivia is such a lucky girl. That, and resentment towards herself for that being all she can put together when she’s supposed to be long past the butterflies in her ribcage.

“Okay, I should probably get going,” he exhales in a huff, breaking her out of the moment. She’s grateful, because knowing her she’d be caught in that loop of forbidden longing for centuries. “Tell me what you end up buying for your mom. I’m curious to see what the present wizard cooks up this time.”

Riley scoffs. “The present wizard?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Everyone knows that you’re the person to have as their Secret Santa if they want a good gift. You’re like, the expert on gift-giving. Like the…”

“The Grandmaster of Winter Holiday Cheer?” she suggest, cocking her head.

His smile is adorable enough to obliterate the invisible defenses around her entirely. Her heart beats a little faster in her chest. “Yeah, something like that. Don’t gift too hard, now.”

“Never! Have a good time. Tell Olivia I say hi.”

“Will do.” The grin is still on his face. “Gotta go, buffalo.”

Riley smiles, shaking her head at their ancient childhood farewell ritual. They stopped saying the stupid phrases around middle school, but somehow they resurfaced in the realm of collegiate communication and now it’s almost habit to end their calls that way. Although both of them openly admit it’s silly, she’d be lying if she claimed it didn’t give her a unique sense of pride that it’s a thing only the two of them share. A piece of their long history that is, apparently, in it for the long haul.

“Bye bye, butterfly,” she responds.

Lucas nods proudly, and as always it makes the embarrassing routine worth it. He clicks a finger gun at her and winks before the call ends, leaving her freshly infatuated in a way that is all the more concerning considering how close around the bend winter break is creeping.

Riley groans, cupping her phone to her chest and collapsing back against her mattress as dramatically as possible.

Growing up ruins everything.

* * *

Luckily, Josh doesn’t allow her much time to wallow. He shows up at her building about five minutes after the video call ends, ringing her cell as he always does rather than texting like a normal human being.

His response to her hello is typical as well.

“I’m outside. Hurry up please, it’s cold. We’ve got places to be!”

He doesn’t even offer her the chance to reply before he hangs up. It’s in moments like these that her uncle reminds her uncannily of Maya.

Josh greets her with a tight hug when she emerges from the building a few minutes later, and together the two of them make their way towards the subway. Conversation is easy the entire way to the shops as it always is with him, the two of them discussing their family and their professional lives and whatever else seems to have popped up in the woodwork the last couple of weeks.

In her humble opinion, his life is far more fascinating than her own. While she’s still slogging through college her uncle is officially feet first in the real world, kicking off his career by working an internship at an architecture firm and writing for an indie music site on the side to help pay rent. All those years blasting The Neighbourhood through her house and showing Lucas, Maya, and the lot of them a slew of underground alternative bands during driving lessons definitely seems to have paid off for him in the end.

“It’s really nice when they pay you for the overly analytical bullshit you were spamming your friends with anyway,” he explains, pulling up the latest published article with his name on the byline and passing it to her to see for herself.

They spend a good majority of the afternoon drifting from store to store, stocking up a sizable haul of gifts for the family and considering even more items that they ultimately decide their wallets can’t afford. Riley feels more engaged and useful than she has in a while, and she realizes maybe Lucas is right—she definitely has an affinity for giving gifts. There’s something about the act of showing someone how well you know them through one simple gesture that she loves more than anything else.

She used to give each of her circle of friends a specialized gift regardless of who she got in Secret Santa, but then everyone started complaining about how she was making the rest of them look bad. Maya claimed it was impossible to participate in the exchange when she knew she was going to get outshined by Riley either way, and Zay and Farkle concurred with the statement. Smackle didn’t seem to see what the big deal was as long as she got more presents.

Lucas never made any public commentary on the whole ordeal, but he promised Riley that even if she did decide to stop with the mass giving, they could still get each other something small every year. Over time, that private exchange became more about quality time than material possessions—an overnight hangout that both of them risked punishment to sneak out and make happen, a day trip only the two of them participated in, a favor passed back and forth between them whenever the need arose in the spring—but it has remained one of her favorite parts of the holiday season. The promise that no matter who she’s giving presents to or what she ends up spending, there’s a special gift dedicated just to her that no one else will get to experience.

She has to wonder absentmindedly if that’s actually true anymore. If she’s still the only person receiving that unique kind of gifting from Lucas, or if Olivia is also getting the same kind of treat. She has to mentally kick herself out of those thoughts.

Whatever Olivia and Lucas have, it doesn’t impact what they share. That’s what Josh told her all those months ago, and she’s at her best when she remembers it.

“What do we think?” Josh says, his tone indicating the following suggestion is going to be among the satirical variety rather than serious. He pulls an atrocious purple fuzzy sweater from the rack, spinning it for her to see. “Don’t you think Cory would love this?”

“Um, I think if you don’t get that for _me_ , I’m going to be very disappointed come December 25th.”

Josh laughs along with her, shaking his head as he returns the pullover to the rack. He shuffles through a couple more items, avoiding her eyes as he clears his throat to ask his next question.

“What do you think Maya might want?”

Riley stops in her tracks, hand hovering over the hanger of another less-than-appealing cashmere sweater. Her jaw drops open slightly, head whipping to look at him as she processes exactly what he’s asking in such a pathetic trying-to-be-casual tone.

Her eyebrows creep upward as a smile spreads across her face. “Oh, are we shopping for Maya now? I didn’t realize she was so high up on your list.”

“Don’t go all manic pixie on me,” he groans, waving her off. She hops closer to him, leaning against the rack and giving him her undivided attention. “We’ve just been talking more and stuff, so I thought it might be nice to get her something. Nothing big, just something to let her know I’m enjoying the conversation. You know?”

“Oh, yeah, for sure. No biggie.”

Her tone is laced with sarcasm. Josh rolls his eyes, aggressively pushing sweater hangers down the rack as he attempts to scoot away from her.

“Only you’re asking me, arguably her best friend and expert authority on the subject.” Josh’s cheeks flush as he continues to pretend she’s no longer there, and she can’t help how her grin stretches. She follows him down the row. “Which means that you actually care what she thinks about it, and you want it to be something she’ll really like. Which is far from nothing big, dear uncle of mine.”

“You know what? Forget I said anything.”

For what it’s worth, Riley doesn’t think he understands how much this information would mean to Maya. Not just because she’s had feelings for him since they were children—regardless of how loftily she claims she’s over it since she went off to the west coast for college—but because Riley knows how much it means to her when someone puts genuine thought into a gift for her. Unlike Lucas, Maya is tough to shop for in the sense that she doesn’t want anything because she never had any reason to expect anything. Her mother rarely had enough money for a makeshift Christmas, and presents were almost out of the question.

The very fact alone that Josh wants to get her something meaningful would be present enough. But considering he plans to spend a few bucks anyway, Riley figures he should do something nice.

“Well, what do you all usually talk about?”

“I mean, lots of stuff,” Josh says with a shrug. If they’re talking all that often Riley is sure it can’t be so vague, but she nods along anyway. If he wants to keep the details to himself because they’re so precious to him, that’s even better. “Music, definitely. We discuss that all the time.”

“That’s it then. That’s what you have to go with.” Immediately, Riley’s gift-giving brain kicks into overdrive. “A mixtape.”

“A mixtape?” Josh gives her a look, raising an eyebrow in a way that is starkly reminiscent of grandma Amy. “Riles, no one listens to tape players anymore. I mean, I wish they did, but they just don’t.”

Riley’s turn to roll her eyes, leading the way out of the clothing store. “Not a literal tape. Just put together a mix of songs you think she’d really like. It’s a dually effective gift, because you took the effort to make it for her _and_ she’ll love getting to explore what you think are impressive must-listen-to songs. Not to mention if there’s an added layer, like the songs make you think of her. Oh, that’s mega bonus points.”

Although he’s trying his best to remain aloof, it’s evident that he’s already warming to her idea. She can see the musical gears grinding in his head, mentally compiling the perfect alternative indie mix to win her fiery friend’s affection. If only he knew he didn’t have to work so hard. “Fine. I guess that’s not a bad idea.”

“Oh, you know you love it,” Riley brags, reaching forward and looping her arm through his. She glances down at the bags on her arm as she walks, exhaling a sigh. “I wish I had found more for my mom, though. I figured she was going to be difficult.”

Josh hums, thinking. “To be honest, you should just make her something that reminds her of when you were young. I know she doesn’t seem like it, but Topanga is totally a sentimentalist. Cory may seem like the one obsessed with you all growing up and leaving him behind, but she’s the one who’s feeling it more than him. It’s always the quiet ones you have to watch, I’m telling you.”

Riley considers this, chewing on her cheek as they walk. She racks her brain for something charming to mine from her youth, but it’s hard to find memories where she was particularly adorable. Mostly, she just remembers being a gangly, awkward mess.

Josh breaks her out of it, groaning even louder than when she was picking on him earlier. She glances at him and notices his disdainful look towards the overhead speakers above them. It takes her a second to tune into the song, recognizing the familiar melody of _The Chipmunk Song_ filtering in through the tinny sound system in the shopping complex.

“Speaking of songs that would never be on a mixtape.”

Something about the track takes Riley back, pulling up a memory from her childhood that she had completely forgotten. Nostalgia shoots through her, snapshots of fond memories of Christmas eve parties, the neighborhood coming together, the ridiculous shenanigans the four of them would put on every year to impress their parents.

Josh scoffs. “Do you remember when you and Maya and the boys used to put on that stupid show? Where you’d sing this—?”

She can remember the joy on Katy Hart’s face that was so often lined with stress, the way Lucas would crack up when she, Maya, and Zay would pull their finale and dogpile him. The distinct twinkle in Topanga’s eye when the four of them got up to take a bow and Riley directed a smile right at her, finally feeling as though she was being noticed. Like for one moment, her mother’s attention was fully on her.

His eyes meet hers just as the lightbulb clicks on above her head. He reads her mind before she can even declare the idea aloud.

“Oh no.”

“Oh, yes!”

“No. No! I forbid it.” He reaches for her as she spins out of his grasp, giddy with laughter. “Don’t bring it back. Let it stay dead!”

“Too late!” Riley declares, skipping ahead of him and pulling her phone out of her pocket. She drafts up a group message, wiggling out of Josh’s reach as he attempts to steal it from her. “You said I should go sentimental.”

“Obnoxious chipmunk songs is not what I was going for.”

She sends the first text, utilizing the few moments before one of them inevitably responds to change the group chat name from their contacts to _Chipmunk Reunion Tour._

**_Riley Matthews:_ ** _Alright, you chipmunks. Are you ready to sing your song?_

**_Zayby Babineaux:_ ** _WAIT_

**_Zayby Babineaux:_ ** _WAIT IS THIS FR_

**_Lucas James Friar:_ ** _What is happening_

**_Zayby Babineaux:_ ** _Are we bringing back the Christmas Eve variety show!!!!!!!_

**_Riley Matthews:_ ** _I think it would be the perfect sentimental gift to give our lovely parents after raising us so well. That is, if everyone is in…_

**_Lucas James Friar:_ ** _Same as usual?_

**_Riley Matthews:_ ** _Um, you think you can pry Theodore from my cold, dead hands?_

**_Lucas James Friar:_ ** _I didn’t say that. But I’m down if everyone else is._

**_Lucas James Friar:_ ** _Okay, Simon?_

**_Zayby Babineaux:_ ** _OKAY!_

**_Lucas James Friar:_ ** _Okay, Theodore?_

**_Riley Matthews:_ ** _Okay!!!!!!!!!_

**_Lucas James Friar:_ ** _Okay, Alvin?_

**_Lucas James Friar:_ ** _Alvin…_

**_Lucas James Friar:_ ** _ALVIN_

**_Peaches Hart:_ ** _OOOOOOOKKKKKKKAAAAAYYYYYY!!!!!!!!_

Riley is grinning so hard it hurts. Josh is shaking his head forlornly next to her, looking up to the ceiling and clasping his hands together. “What have I done?”

“You, Joshua Gabriel Matthews, have just saved Christmas.”

“That’s not how I’d put it.”

She’s so thrilled she doesn’t even notice the email come in until her phone buzzes as a reminder in her pocket, causing her to pull it out seconds after she put it away. The message blinks at her on her lock screen, right above the email containing the bombshell information.

“Oh my God!” she gasps, holding her arm out to steady herself.

Josh comes to her aid, gripping her shoulder and looking her over with concern. “What? What?”

“Secret Santa!”

He blinks at her, letting out another signature moan. He seems to do a lot of vocal complaining when he hangs out with her, she realizes. “You have got to stop doing that. More dramatic than my brother, I swear.”

Riley ignores him, heart pounding as she opens the email from the online website handling all of their exchange information. Her mind is already swirling with potential ideas depending on whose name is inside the message.

She hits the top of her inbox with her thumb, cellular data taking a painstaking amount of time to retrieve the body of the text.

_Happy holidays, Riley! Thank you for signing up with SecretSantaSwap. We hope your gift exchange is a resounding success._

Riley scrolls through the bulk of the email, knowing exactly where to stop to find what she’s looking for. She discovers she’s holding her breath.

**_You are giving a gift to:_ ** _Lucas._

Somehow, it’s the only name she’s not at all prepared for. Maya, she had endless ideas for. Smackle would’ve been a no-brainer. She even had a few presents for Zay up her sleeve if his name had come up on her radar.

Riley blinks, trying to absorb this new assignment.

She’s Lucas’s Secret Santa. She’s getting a gift for Lucas.

It should be a delight to have him as her choice. He’s her best friend, and she knows him better than anyone else. They give each other presents every year anyway, after all. But her mind seems to have gone blank, the notion feeling nearly impossible.

Maybe it’s the year of distance that makes it seem so daunting. Maybe it’s the fact that her feelings for him still haven’t settled the way they’re supposed to, and for whatever reason that complicates things even though she knows it shouldn’t.

Maybe, it’s simply because as she couldn’t bear to tell him earlier, he’s almost impossible to shop for. Maybe it’s just as simple as that.

“Well,” Josh asks nosily, peering over her shoulder. “Who’d you get?”

She tilts the screen so he can read for himself, waiting impatiently for his reaction. She’s trying her best to remain impassive, but the moment he locks eyes with her again she can tell from his expression that she’s in for it.

“Yikes.” He raises an eyebrow at her. “Are you going to be able to handle that?”

“What do you mean?” Riley asks, shrugging and stuffing her phone in her coat pocket. She continues their walk through the stores. “I’m fine with it. I think it’ll be nice. It’s been a while since I’ve gotten him a real gift.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Your face shows you’re really feeling calm about all this. Couldn’t care less.”

“Nope!”

Josh nods slowly, a teasing smirk just beginning to grow on his lips. Riley braces herself, cheeks already flushed in embarrassment. “Only you’re chewing your lip, which is your telltale sign of nerves. And you’re probably already trying to figure out what kind of gift shows him you care about him without coming on too strong and making him think you _care_ about him, which you definitely still do. Which is far from couldn’t care less, dear niece of mine.”

Riley elbows him in the ribs. “Forget you saw anything.”

“You know what this is?” Josh throws an arm around her shoulders, jostling her in an effort to lift her spirits. “This is retribution for resurrecting the Chipmunks. Every crime has to meet fair punishment.”

* * *

All of Riley’s anxieties about the gift exchange go out the window the moment she sees him again.

When she heads home from New York to Philly for the holiday break, it’s all she can think about. The looming specter of their reunion hangs over her for the first couple of days she’s home before the rest of her peers, giving her unusual tingles along her collarbone and keeping her up at night despite being back in the comfort of her own bed.

She’s been away from him so long, she’s almost certain she won’t know how to be around him when he’s back. And that would be a punishment far worse than Chipmunk resurrection warrants.

Zay is the first of the neighborhood back after her, followed by Maya. It’s a joy to see them again, but she finds herself unable to tell either of them about her nerves over the homecoming of her best friend. It’s almost as if she’s been bottling up so much about him for so long, that so many of her thoughts about him have always been distinctly private, that the thought of spilling them out for anyone to hear seems like the greatest mistake she could ever make.

So she continues to worry in silence, chewing her fingernails down to buds and surfing Pinterest for gift ideas when it keeps her awake.

It’s a cold, icy afternoon when it happens, she and Maya crashed on the couch in her living room and watching coverage of the snow forecasted to fall over them in the next couple of days. It’s already up to a few inches outside the door, and Riley almost believes Lucas may not get home at all if the weather has anything to say about it. She hates her nervousness for making a small part of her wish that maybe that’ll be the case.

The possibility is shattered a moment later, when a snowball hits the window and bursts apart against the glass. She jumps and Maya curses loudly beside her, tossing a scowl at the door.

“What lame kid has such terrible aim?”

Her phone buzzing in her pocket answers the question for them. _Chipmunk Reunion Tour_ speaks again.

**_Zayby Babineaux:_ ** _Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals!_

**_Zayby Babineaux:_ ** _Come outside. Special delivery._

Maya and Riley lift their heads at the same time, the former cocking an eyebrow and glancing towards the doorway once again.

Riley is on her feet first, pulling on her snow boots and yanking open the door. Suddenly, adrenaline is rushing through her, and her nerves don’t stand a chance. When she steps out onto her porch and looks across the street, she’s lucky enough to avoid the snowball that collides with Maya a second later behind her. She hears her friend shout another cuss but it sounds faraway, all of her attention trained on the person standing in the middle of the snow-covered street across from her.

It’s like the entire world stops spinning for one solitary second. For one second it’s just him, bundled up in too many layers of blue. Tanned golden, even in the winter. He’s got that stupid smirk on his face and although she can’t see it underneath the knit cap, she knows that notorious cowlick is sticking up exactly where it shouldn’t be.

For a year’s worth of time and distance apart, he’s standing on that curb he’s stood on a million times before and smiling at her like they’re the only two people on the entire street. In the whole world.

Riley takes off running through the snow as skillfully as she can muster, leaping up the moment she’s close enough to barrel him with a hug.

He catches her, stumbling slightly due to the adverse weather conditions. She feels her feet leave the ground and then he’s spinning them both, their shared laughter echoing through the quiet tundra of their neighborhood. Riley feels warm enough inside and out to melt every inch of snow that has accumulated around them.

When she meets the snow-covered concrete again, she manages to take a step back from him to actually get a good look. She has to grip his shoulders for support—she’s a little unsteady on her feet, and she doesn’t think it’s from the twirling.

His smirk may be dumb, but it’s probably her favorite thing in existence. “Hey.”

“Hi,” she exhales with a laugh, resisting the urge to hug him again.

“You see that bullshit?” Maya says, propping her elbow on Zay’s shoulder. She shakes her head. “She sure didn’t greet _me_ like that when I came back from three-thousand miles away.”

“Well, you’re not five feet eleven inches of pure Huckleberry charm, are you?”

“Shut up, Babineaux.”

For how well she was managing not having him in her life so consistently, it doesn’t take long to remember how much better it is when he’s there. He has dinner at their house that night, his mother tagging along in a decision that seems to surprise even him. He tells her in confidence as they’re both getting a drink from her fridge that he doesn’t see why she bothers to spend so much time welcoming him back now when she never seemed to care too much when he was actually around, but in a way Riley feels like she gets where Grace is coming from. It’s easy to take advantage of a good thing when you’re so used to having it around you at all times. It’s when it’s suddenly out of your reach that you recognize how important to you it actually is.

The way shivers run down her spine when he leans in to whisper the sentiment to her is reminder enough of that.

There’s all these little things she didn’t realize she valued so much until she was deprived of them for a year. The whispered confidences that only pass between the two of them, the small offhand touches like a shoulder nudge or a tap on the knee. The way he still obnoxiously props his elbow on her shoulder as if to assert his natural height over her, only the habit that once drove her crazy now means more than to her than she’d ever admit aloud. The sense of familiarity, those things that only the two of them could ever truly share the way they have it.

Considering her serious comeback from withdrawal, Riley finds herself searching for opportunities to hang out just the two of them more than usual. Sure, she’s happy to see her other friends again and grateful they’re home to share the holiday with her, but Lucas is for whatever reason the only person she actively wants to see.

It’s what she’s pondering as they take an afternoon walk together through the neighborhood the weekend before Christmas, along with the ever puzzling stress of what to get him for Secret Santa. Being back with him after such a long time apart is enough of a gift for the rest of her life to her, but she doubts that feeling is mutual and she’s going to have to pull out all the stops if she wants to maintain her role as present wizard.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Lucas asks, their boots crunching in the snow as they trudge their way around the circle.

She glances at him, tilting her head. “What?”

“How none of this ever changes,” he says, keeping his eyes down on his shoes. He nods towards the houses they’re passing by, decorated for the season and lit up with lots of colorful twinkling lights. The décor had always been one of Riley’s favorite parts of living in the suburbs—they don’t do much of it in the bustling city. “Ms. Rand has put up the same ancient decorations since we were kids. That deer with the one eye has been in Kiener’s yard since Zay accidentally knocked it out with the Frisbee in fourth grade.”

Riley can’t help but chuckle. She crosses her arms, nodding along. “His aim hasn’t improved since.”

“I don’t know. It’s just weird.” He stuffs his hands in his pockets, blinking at the blanket of snow covering their familiar neighborhood. He suddenly feels a thousand miles away again. “I feel like I’m changing so much, getting all old and stuff, and this place is like a time capsule. Like I’m going to come back one day and I’m not going to fit anymore, or something.”

Despite how happy she’s been to have him back, she can’t deny she’s noticed something is slightly off. She can’t put her finger on it, but something about the way his brow furrows makes her nostalgic in a way she doesn’t quite like. It feels like when they were twelve and he was getting expelled, only more muted. It’s not anger anymore, which would’ve fine because it’s familiar. That, she knows how to handle.

It’s something else, and she doesn’t know what it is or how to fix it. And much like the anger, she can’t reach up and rub at the crinkle between his brows to nitpick it away.

So she does the next best thing. The thing she’s always done, regardless of how its helped her own desires for their relationship or not.

She remains his goofy best friend.

Riley reaches down, taking advantage of his distracted state to bundle a handful of snow into her palms. Once she’s crafted it to peak roundness, she taps him on the shoulder. “Lucas.”

The moment he turns, eyebrows raised, she utilizes the close proximity of how they’re standing to land a solid shot with the snowball. It explodes right in his face, shocking him out of his pensive state and causing him to gasp.

“Oh my God!”

Riley cracks up, immediately backing up a few steps in preparation for retaliation. “My aim, on the other hand—,”

“Oh, you’re smug,” Lucas says, a smile back on his face. He drops to his knees, gathering a much larger snowball in his fingers. “You better run, Riley Matthews.”

She shrieks and takes off as fast as she can through the obstacle course that is snow-covered Adams Street, weaving through lawns they’ve ran since they were five and ducking as much of his snowy ammunition as she can. They exchange another good couple of hits by the time they’re back in her driveway, out of breath and riddled with goosebumps.

Lucas gives up on aim when they make it back to her lawn, tackling her instead and sending them both sprawling into the snow. She’s laughing so hard she can’t catch her breath, likely due in no small part to the fact that her five foot eleven best friend is currently sprawled on top of her.

He rolls onto his back and fights bouts of breathless giggles, his knit cap not surviving the fall and splaying in the frost underneath him. His cheeks are flushed from the cold, and there are flakes of snow caught on his eyelashes. But all Riley can focus on are those stubborn cowlicks now on display, resiliently present even in the bitter cold.

“No matter how much you grow, as long as I’m here you fit.” She turns her head to lock eyes with him. “Understand?”

He examines her for a moment, before nodding. The smirk returns, but softer this time. “Okay.”

That’s what she loves most about them, after all. The fact that no matter what shifts between them, what question marks arise, there’s an unbridled sense of belonging that she has never shared with anybody else. It’s not so much Adams Street as a place that makes that her truth—Lucas _is_ Adams Street, and she figures she would feel right at home wherever she ended up so long as he was there with her.

Familiarity. And a little bit of something else. Sentimentality.

Something sentimental.

Like a snowball to the face, Riley’s goosebumps return with a vengeance. Because all the sudden, she knows exactly what gift she is getting Lucas Friar for Secret Santa.

* * *

For a number of reasons, December 22nd cannot come fast enough.

Although she felt great about it at the time, the longer she has to sit on her self-proclaimed perfect gift the more she starts to wonder if it’s actually the worst gift of all time. What if he absolutely hates it? What if he doesn’t get the reasoning behind why she got it or even worse, just doesn’t get it in general? What if this one gift makes him realize how much of a complete disaster she is and he decides in the middle of Secret Santa that he’s wasted fifteen years of his life having a best friend who is a total moron and he wants absolutely no part in it any longer no thank you goodbye?

Okay, Riley knows all of that is highly unlikely. The worst thing that could possibly happen is that he’s not as moved by the present as she hopes he will be, and considering he’s Lucas she knows he’ll like it in some capacity simply because she put thought into it at all.

Still, it’s somewhat of a relief when she wraps it in gift paper and puts his name on the label, solidifying her decision for good. No turning back now.

Riley and Smackle take the snowy trek over to Chubbie’s together, the latter spending the entire walk deftly avoiding all attempts to reveal who her present is for. She won’t even let Riley see the wrapping paper, tucking the small parcel in the inner pocket of her coat and claiming that Riley always makes a point of figuring out who everybody else has and she’s not going to let her get away with it this year.

Although there is truth to the sentiment, this year Riley had been so preoccupied with what to get her best friend she hadn’t even spared a thought towards everyone else. Now that they’re an hour away from reveal time, she’s suddenly ravenous with curiosity.

They’re the first to arrive at the dive, staking out the corner booth in the back and settling in to getting everything set up. Chubbie doesn’t pay them any mind, well aware of the annual Adams Street tradition and having learned long ago that things go much smoother when he steps back and stays out of Riley’s way.

Farkle is next through the door with the benefit of proximity, sliding into the booth next to Smackle and greeting her with a kiss on the cheek. “How goes it, Riley?”

“Oh, you know, just breaking my back trying to make sure this gift exchange goes as smoothly as possible while everyone else takes their idle time.” She eyes him as he slips off his jacket, gasping when she sees the sweater he’s chosen to wear this evening. It’s dark blue and has a large knit menorah on the front, and although Riley is thrilled to see him embracing his Jewish heritage so openly she’s a bit miffed he’s chosen today to do so. “Farkle!”

“What?”

She huffs, tapping her foot. Behind her, Maya arrives and makes her way down the stairs to greet them. “You know the rule. Funny holiday sweaters are a must on Secret Santa day.”

“Oh good,” Maya proclaims, dropping her gift haphazardly on the pile curating on the table next to theirs. “I got here just in time for the drama.”

“There is no drama.”’

“Riley, this _is_ a funny holiday sweater.” Farkle shrugs, gesturing blithely to the menorah. “The joke is I’m Jewish, and yet I’m still here celebrating a clearly commercialized Christian holiday with you dum-dums.”

Maya rolls her eyes. “Please, you’ve been celebrating both since you were like thirteen. Calm down, edgelord.”

Zay and Lucas arrive together a few minutes later, and it’s not long before the six of them are gathered together again. Riley finds an immense amount of joy in watching the gifts on the table pile up, antsy with anticipation at seeing what everybody got and figuring out the grand reveal of who gave which gift to whom.

Mostly, she’s grateful they’re all back in one place. If she can manage one day a year where she has all of them within arm’s reach, then she can survive the rest of the calendar cycle without it.

“Okay, okay, let’s see who’s up first,” she says over their chatter, loud like usual considering how comfortable they are with one another. Farkle and Zay snap disses back and forth while Riley closes her eyes, choosing the first gift from the table and checking the gift label. “To Farkle! From your Secret Santa.”

Riley passes the package over as she slides back into the booth, somehow having ended up squished on the end right next to Lucas. She bumps his arm with her shoulder on accident and he gives her a playful glare, earning a shy smile in response.

She shouldn’t have sat next to him. His charm is at dangerous levels so up close.

“Alright, let’s see,” Farkle murmurs, ripping the wrapping paper off. It’s a rather large, hard-cover book, and at first Riley thinks it’s a textbook until the expression on his face shifts into a scowl. “ _How Not To Be a Dick: An Everyday Guide—_ ,”

The table erupts into laughter, Zay hooting and clapping him on the back. Farkle shrugs him off, nodding at all of them sarcastically.

“Very funny, you’re all so very clever.”

“Open the book,” Riley suggests, knowing the secret of the additional gift only because the person who gave it is the one person who doesn’t care about spilling her assignment. Maya gives her a wink across the table, a thank you for prompting him so she doesn’t have to and spoil the surprise.

“Open it!” Zay cheers along, starting a chant amongst the table. “Open it!”

Farkle waves them off, flipping the book open. Taped inside the front cover are two tickets to the Franklin Institute, which he had been complaining about not having been to since he left for college and missing all the new exhibitions.

“Ah, fine, all is forgiven.” He grins in spite of himself as he pries the tickets free from the book, turning them over in his fingers. “Two tickets. Really splurging, I see.”

“Now you can take Smackle,” Lucas points out.

Riley smiles. “Treat your girl, Farkle Minkus.”

Farkle locks eyes with Smackle, raising his eyebrows at her pointedly. Despite attempting to maintain her neutral expression she cracks a smile at the look on his face, looking away and blushing ever so slightly. As far as Riley knows, Farkle is the only person that has ever made Isadora Smackle bashful.

They continue in their usual tradition of going clockwise from the starter person, resulting in Smackle going next. She tears open her box to find a cozy olive green cardigan, a pretty addition to her already remarkable set. Zay receives a new backpack to replace the one he’s had since middle school that is in tatters, which he stubbornly refuses to replace to all of their chagrin. At first he acts offended, but when he unzips the bag and finds a month’s worth of homemade chocolate chip cookies inside he suddenly doesn’t seem to even remember his indignation.

Then it’s Lucas’s turn, and Riley can barely keep her hands from shaking as she picks up his present from the table. She has no idea why she’s so nervous, but just like the anticipation of reuniting after a year apart, the anticipation of him seeing this gift she spent so much time mulling over is giving her heart palpitations.

Her mouth is dry as she passes the gift to him, waiting a moment to give him space before sliding back into the booth next to him. He makes a point of turning it over in his hands, making a show of trying to figure out what it is before he opens it.

He rattles it near his ear, humming thoughtfully. “Dense weight. Not a lot of movement. Feels like… a book? Maybe a textbook of some kind?”

The rest of them immediately launch into protests, shouting him down and urging him to just open the thing already.

Maya’s louder than any of them. “You’re the worst!”

Lucas grins mischievously as he raises a hand in surrender, dropping the present down on the table to unwrap it from the back. Riley finds herself holding her breath.

For a moment, nothing. He’s looking at the back of the book and squinting, trying to piece together exactly what he’s looking at. For that instance of contemplation, his face is tilted into a slight frown, and Riley debates running out of the dive and straight back to New York without ever looking back.

Then she sees it. She sees the instant he recognizes it, surprise coloring his features as the orange binding of the book suddenly becomes familiar to him. Tentatively, he flips it over to place the cover face up, staring at a brand new copy of the encyclopedia on horses he’s read so many times since he was in middle school.

She doesn’t tell him it’s a new edition with over fifty more pages than his dated copy or the one from the library. She doesn’t tell him about the small note she wrote inside. She doesn’t say a word, because she doesn’t want to disturb one fraction of the absolute awe that has taken over his features. For now, the impactful silence speaks enough for her.

Lucas gently brushes his fingers over the cover, almost like he can’t believe it’s real and he has to test it to make sure. His features are softer than ever—and God, how she loves them when they’re soft.

After a moment, he lifts his gaze from the gift and immediately locks eyes with her, a million questions in his expression but all secondary to the gratitude that has taken him over. Fondness is how she would describe the look on his face in that moment. She wants to capture it forever.

There’s nothing she can think of to say. She’s not supposed to say anything anyway considering that technically, they don’t know who their Secret Santa is, even though it’s very clear he knows it’s her. She doesn’t think she could speak even if she wanted to, because the captivating quality of his eyes and overwhelming affection have exacerbated her case of cotton mouth.

Instead, she gives him a beam, hoping it translates everything she wishes she could say. Everything from how proud of him she is to how much she loves him, regardless of whether he’ll ever know the full nature of it or not. She hopes he knows that more than anything else.

“Gee, I wonder who gave Lucas that present. It couldn’t be the person he’s staring directly at, could it?”

“Nice Christmas spirit, Maya,” Farkle chides, making a face. “You can’t let anyone have a moment, can you?”

Maya snorts. “This coming from the person who literally earlier called it a commercialized Christian holiday.”

“You’re a mean one,” Zay sings, dropping his voice down an octave for emphasis. “Maya Grinch.”

“Shut up!”

“You really are a heel!”

The resulting commotion and insistence from Smackle to get back on track disrupts the overall impact of the exchange, but it doesn’t matter. Riley can feel Lucas’s warmth radiating off him a little stronger than usual, and she can sense him sneaking glances at her throughout the night long after his turn has come and gone. She doesn’t know if it’s intentional or not, but she definitely can’t focus on anything else.

All things considered, she’d call this year’s Secret Santa exchange—as SecretSantaSwap wished it to be—a resounding success.

* * *

With Christmas on the horizon, the neighborhood gets together as usual on Christmas eve at the Matthews house.

It’s a bustling affair considering the whole block is there along with the entire Matthews clan. Grandpa Alan is holding court amongst the boys, telling Lucas, Farkle, and Zay about the time he had to fight a bear when he and Amy went camping back when they were newlyweds (a completely exaggerated tale). Grandma Amy is helping Topanga and Eric in the kitchen, and soon-to-be uncle Jack is introducing himself to the neighborhood parents he’s not acquainted with yet.

It’s a lot of chaos, but it’s warm and familiar in the way Riley loves most. All the people she loves most corralled into one place, celebrating a mutual appreciation for one another and the connections they share.

Maya eyes her mother talking to Cory’s best friend Shawn, raising an eyebrow. Standing next to her in her bright red Alvin-coordinated turtleneck, matched with her own green sweater they’re essentially the epitome of Christmas cheer personified. “What do you think that’s supposed to be?”

“I think they’re just talking, Maya.”

“Hm,” Maya huffs, crossing her arms. “He better not get any funny ideas. That’s my mom we’re talking about.”

“Pretty sure he’s taken. He recently rekindled an old college romance of his.”

“A likely story.”

“Angela’s awesome. You’d love her.” Riley drops her voice to a murmur at the off-chance Topanga suddenly wanders into the room. “She is totally the main reason my mom has any sense of cool.”

Maya raises her eyebrows, amused. “Oh, so she’s like the me to Topanga’s you.”

Riley rolls her eyes, nudging her friend playfully. Maya makes to shove her back but straightens up when Josh makes his way over to them, brushing her hair behind her ears. Suddenly in mature mode.

“Hi, Josh.”

“Hey, Maya. Niece.” Riley gives him a nod, unable to hold back the knowing smirk on her lips. He glances at her again before avoiding her gaze, clearing his throat. “Maya, you have a second?”

“Depends. Who’s asking? And why? I’m a very busy woman, I don’t have seconds to waste.”

Josh makes a face, humoring her. “Oh, of course. I was just hoping you could spare a moment to accept a humble gift from a lower being like myself.”

Maya’s evidently shocked at the possibility, eyes widening as he pulls the small wrapped CD case out of his pocket. It takes her a second longer than usual to put her bold exterior back together, clasping her hands together in front of her and humming uncertainly. As he’s done many times before without realizing it, Josh Matthews has rendered Maya Hart speechless.

And she hasn’t even opened the present. Riley brushes her right braid off her shoulder, backing off. “I’m gonna go get something to drink.”

Josh gives her a grateful nod, Maya still too unprepared to spare her a glance. Riley grins to herself as she weaves her way through the living room, sliding into the small dining area where the food and drinks are set up buffet style.

By a Christmas eve miracle, Lucas happens to already be standing there when she approaches. She bumps into him and catches him by surprise, causing him to jump in spite of himself. Her giggle when he realizes it’s her is involuntary, another one of those weird effects he has on her.

“Hi, jumpy.”

“Sorry. I thought you were Zay’s grandma. She keeps trying to shove mini hot dogs on me because she is convinced I’m not eating enough and that I’ll shrivel up and collapse if I don’t eat exactly fourteen cookies right this minute.” He pours her a drink without even thinking about it, handing it to her before prepping his own. “Grandmas are scary.”

She doesn’t see how grandma Babineaux can look at him and find a single flaw. Particularly in the button down he’s wearing. She knows he only chose it as part of his classic Dave Seville impersonation for their Reunion Tour, but when he walked through the door in it she practically swooned. It’s like he’s specifically torturing her and he doesn’t even know it.

“Grandpas can be too,” Riley comments, raising an eyebrow as she takes a sip of her punch. “You didn’t fall for grandpa Alan’s bear story, did you?”

“Riley, I’ve been at your house for fifteen—count ‘em, fifteen—Christmas eve parties. I’ve heard Alan’s great bear crusade every single year and the details change wildly every time he tells it. I’m pretty, but I’m not an idiot.”

She smiles, shrugging and focusing her attention to the finger food. She picks up a carrot stick, biting off a piece. “He just wants someone to impress. That’s what my grandma says at least. She’s always humoring the stories because she knows it makes him feel important, but she could probably stand to correct them every once and a while.”

“That’s what we have to look forward to, huh? Going senile.”

“Maybe. That and having no social security funds because our parents absorbed it all.”

“Promise me you’ll always correct my stupid stories,” he says suddenly. He’s not looking at her but out at the crowd in her living room, watching their neighborhood enjoy the festivities. After a long moment, he shifts his gaze to meet hers. “Promise me that when we’re old and going senile, you’ll fact check all the nonsense I’m telling the next generation. Keep me honest even in my crotchety elder years.”

It’s a strange request to be asked of her at Christmas eve dinner, coming from an even stranger subject. Lucas is far too young to be worrying about what state he’s going to be in when he’s old—he’s barely over twenty and has so much life ahead of him to stress about that.

Even more pointedly, Riley can’t help but fixate on what the promise implies. The very task of maintaining such an agreement requires a guarantee that they’ll still be in each other’s lives decades from now, as tight-knit as they are at this moment. In some ways, it requires the kind of relationship her grandpa Alan and grandma Amy have, connected enough to be able to even recognize when a story has been warped with time.

In an essence, Lucas is asking her to promise him forever.

He can’t mean too much by it considering Olivia is still very much in the picture as far as she knows. If anything, he should be making the request of her. But instead he’s here, looking at her with those dazzlingly soft eyes and really, he rarely asks her for anything. He’s fulfilled a million promises for her since they were kids and hardly asked for a single thing in return.

Riley wonders if she would be able to correct him, or if she’d be like her grandma—so fond of how happy the tall tale makes him that she wouldn’t be able to do it.

“I promise,” she agrees, searching for a way to ease the tension she feels in her chest and lesson the seriousness of the moment. “But what do I get in return for such a valiant public service?”

Lucas hums, thinking. “I’m sure we can work out something.” After a moment his eyes light up, that mischievous smirk creeping back onto his face. “Yeah. You can be the story editor and fact checker, and I’ll be in charge of assuring you just how pretty you are even when that brown hair has dulled to grey.”

He reaches forward, taking her left braid in his fingers and twirling it idly. He tickles the end of it against her cheek and she laughs, swatting his hand away.

It’s not the first time he’s called her pretty or complimented her hair—in fact, he apparently once called her the “pretty brunette” when pointing her out to a classmate in middle school and Zay never let him live it down—but she can’t exactly think of a time he’s been so forthright about it. Particularly not when he’s currently taken.

Again, something about him is slightly off in a way that she can’t quite put her finger on.

The universe doesn’t give her the chance to dwell, _The Chipmunk Song_ suddenly blasting through the speakers in the living room. Everyone bursts into giddy chatter, obviously reminiscent of the Christmas eves of the past without even knowing it’s about to be reborn right before their very eyes.

Lucas grins, tilting his head at her. “Ready, chipmunk?”

“Okay!” she declares, not waiting up as she darts into the living room to start the show.

* * *

Nothing is a more extravagant proceeding than the farewells at a Matthews family gathering.

The goodbyes always start confident then trickle into another ten minutes of conversation, continuing in a reliable pattern until another hour has passed. The hugs are long and suffocating in the best way possible, squeezing all the possible worries out of you with each successive embrace. Although the entire evening is filled with love Riley never feels it more than in that period, when friends are wishing each other happy holidays and her father is hugging his parents with as much warmth as he gives her.

Sure, Christmas morning is always fun, but nothing beats Christmas eve night.

She accepts a warm hug from Farkle as he heads out and accepts a cheek kiss from each Babineaux as they head back across the street. Smackle gives her a stiff hug and wishes her safe travels when they head down to D.C. with uncle Eric for New Years, planning on leaving the morning after Christmas. The Harts hang around a little longer than the rest but Maya isn’t much for chatting, her gaze glued to the CD case from Josh that she seems absolutely dying to go home and play. Riley puts an effort into getting them out the door to give her just that opportunity, an unspoken bonus holiday gift she’s happy to bestow on her dear friend.

Then comes the elaborate process of each Matthews clan member getting their owed farewells. Riley receives hug after hug, and for how exhausting the whole evening has been she finds herself wishing they didn’t have to leave so soon. Eric and Topanga get sidetracked multiple times discussing the itinerary for the next couple days, so much so that Jack has to practically pull his fiancé from the house, wishing all of them a happy holiday and the assurance that they’ll see them in just a couple days.

Finally, the house is back to the immediate family. Riley gives a special goodnight hug to each of her parents, cheerfully agreeing when they say they’ll see her in the morning. She takes extra care to share a hug with her brother, sending him off to bed with a kiss on the cheek. She retreats to her room and waits for the house to settle, for the floors to stop creaking with movement and the hustle of the earlier festivities to fade to plaintive stillness, like frozen anticipation of what joy might come tomorrow morning.

Then, Riley gets to her feet and sneaks downstairs, opening the back door and letting Lucas back into the house.

When he’d said his goodbyes earlier as he and his mother were heading out, he pulled her aside and asked if she would be willing to spend some time hanging out later tonight when everyone else was gone. Considering she was going to be leaving town for a good remainder of winter break, he wanted to make sure they got their quality time as tradition permitted.

Riley agreed, less so because of his explanation and more so because there was still something about him that made her feel like for whatever reason, he really needed her to say yes. Something about the tone in his voice and how tentatively he requested it, as if there was any major possibility she’d say no. Something about that unidentified edge she can’t seem to name or nitpick away.

Not that she’s in any way complaining.

Lucas brings along the new horse encyclopedia and they spend a solid half an hour flipping through it, reclined back against her headboard and speaking in quiet murmurs like they’ve done a thousand times before in an effort not to wake Auggie. If this whole break was an exercise in nostalgia then this moment certainly takes the cake—Riley honestly didn’t ever think she’d be sitting up late with Lucas and that silly encyclopedia again, listening to him read passages from it and alternating between gazing at him and staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.

Only it’s different now, of course. For one, Riley can actually read just fine on her own, but she kind of likes it better when he’s reading it to her. She likes the measured cadences he takes when reciting versus speaking on his own, the way his voice comes out softer combined with the necessity for low volume. She likes that now that he’s older and knows so much more about the subject himself, she can ask him a question about what they’re discussing and he can answer on his own merit.

She loves the way his eyes twinkle when he talks about all of it. She can’t help but think he’s going to make the most wonderful veterinarian in the world.

Lucas trails off after a particularly wordy passage about horse genetics, thumbing the corner of the cover before shifting his gaze to her. “This is the best present anyone has ever gotten me. Or probably ever will get me.”

“Oh, well, now you’re setting the bar so low. If that’s your expectation, it’s going to be so easy to top that.” She mirrors his smile, slouching further against her pillow and knocking her knee against his. “You’re making it too easy, Blue Boy.”

Lucas nods, acquiescing this fact. He gently closes the encyclopedia, leaning it back against his thighs and keeping his eyes on the cover. He doesn’t look at her when he speaks again.

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” he says, voice barely above a whisper.

The blank look from the snowball fight is back in his features, offering more questions than answers as usual. She searches for a way to make it go away, but she knows she can’t do that when she doesn’t understand why it’s present in the first place. “It’ll only be for a few days. We’ll still have like a week before we have to go back to school.”

“Yeah.” He blinks, somewhat distant. He swallows, nodding. “Yeah, I know. I know.”

She wants to ask him what’s wrong. She wants to nitpick it away, shield him from whatever it is the same way her mother does every morning when she fixes her father’s hair and straightens his collar. She’s felt that way for as long as she can remember, and it’s something that has never changed regardless of whatever else has in their dynamic.

Maybe forever is simpler to promise than it seems.

Lucas places the textbook on the floor by the bed, leaning back against the mattress with a sigh. It’s weird to have him there in some ways, considering the last time they were in this position they had spent the night kissing and Riley’s world flipped upside down. To this day, she’s pretty sure it never flipped back.

“I can’t believe you still have those,” he comments, eyeing the stars on her ceiling. She’s relieved that the ghost of a laugh is back in his tone.

She shrugs defensively. “They’re difficult to remove. They don’t kid around with that adhesive. Besides, what wrong with keeping a little piece of your childhood around? What’s wrong with wanting some things to stay the same?”

“Don’t know.” He pauses, clasping his hands together on his stomach and picking at a hangnail. “Guess it just feels like the universe doesn’t approve. It wants things to keep changing.”

There’s a subtle raspy quality to his voice that wasn’t there before, but she can’t tell if it’s because he’s tired or because of something else. She’s only ever heard that tone once before from him, back almost ten years ago the first time she gave him the encyclopedia. As far as she knows, the hardest period of his life up to that point.

“Do you ever think about that?”

“What?”

“How it just keeps going,” Lucas says without elaborating further. “Like, whether you like or not everything just keeps going and going with or without you. The universe drags you along for the ride if you can keep up, and you go and go until you end up wherever you’re supposed to end up. At least, you hope. And then that’s it. Then it’s over. And all of that passes in a blink in the grand scheme of things. Our entire existence is just this blip on the record of the universe. And then you’re gone.”

He’s evidently spent a lot of time thinking about this. More time than Riley figures is probably healthy. She wonders if Olivia knows. She wonders if anybody knows, since she sure didn’t and only sensed potential unease based on years and years of studying her best friend like an art form.

Another mysterious layer to their relationship, to him, that she has no idea how to tackle. So she does as she always does—searches for the way to lighten the mood.

“Kids aren’t supposed to talk about that,” she says cheekily, but the humor doesn’t quite come off convincingly.

He tilts his head at her. “Talk about what?”

“Dying.” It takes him a moment, but eventually he recalls the conversation she’s referring to. One of the earliest ones she can really remember with him, one of those memories that has no real significance yet is set in her subconscious like stone.

Impressive, how many of those cast-iron memories involve him.

He gives her a smirk, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. She can’t blame him. She doesn’t quite it feel it either.

“Well, we’re not kids anymore, are we?”

It’s said like a joke, but the room is heavy with the truth of it.

“No,” Riley admits, sinking further into the comforter underneath her. She exhales a sigh. “No, we’re not.”

The clock on her bedside table ticks past two in the morning. She didn’t even realize it was Christmas day. Funny, how her priorities change with time.

Lucas lets out a deep breath, letting his eyes flutter closed. Clearly not planning on going anywhere any time soon. “Merry Christmas, Riley.”

She gazes at him, wondering how long he’s planning to stay. Wondering if it even matters. Then, she allows herself to rest her head against his arm, breathing in the familiar laundry detergent that smells like home even more than her actual address.

She knows where they stand. She knows what they are to each other, and she’s given up trying to act as though she has control over how it may or may not change. Lucas is right about one thing—the universe likes to make decisions and move forward without her, and she’s done running herself into the ground to keep up.

So she focuses on the things that aren’t up for negotiation. The sun rising in the morning. Time marching on. She and Lucas and the determination to keep each other honest and share reassurances of beauty, regardless of how reality ages them. The promise of forever.

“Merry Christmas, Lucas.”


	8. twenty-one ( lucas )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _But of all these friends and lovers,  
>  There is no one compares with you.  
> And these memories lose their meaning  
> When I think of love as something new.  
> I know I’ll never lose affection  
> For people and things that went before.  
> I know I’ll often stop and think about them,  
> In my life, I love you more._
> 
> \-- The Beatles, "In My Life"

After so many years away, Lucas finds it weird to be home.

It’s not exactly a prolonged stay either. With undergrad behind him and veterinary school on the horizon in just a couple of weeks, being back in Philadelphia for the summer feels more like some cozy purgatory than a homecoming. It’s simply a transitional state, a halfway point between the phase of his life he’s leaving behind and the phase he’s jumping off to next. One of those many periods the universe doesn’t like to wait up for, speeding into it whether he’s on board or not.

Part of it, he recognizes, is because for as much as the neighborhood has been a safe haven for him throughout his childhood, his dwelling on Adams Street has never felt like much of a home. He’s never felt attached to it, spending more time searching for other places to be than putting an effort into making it his own. When he looked forward to coming back to Adams for holiday breaks, it was never about the house that is not a home.

All of the above considered, it makes sense that he didn’t bother to come back when everything went to hell junior year.

He still doesn’t know to this day what caused the downward spiral. Objectively, everything in his life was going perfectly—great education, awesome friends, endless opportunity in front of him. An epic internship. A fantastic girlfriend. Nothing to complain about, that’s for sure.

Yet nothing seemed to be clicking right anymore. It was like he turned twenty and someone flipped a switch off in his brain, and in an instant nothing operated the way it was supposed to. He couldn’t focus in class. He didn’t know how to talk to his friends. He didn’t have all that much interest in much of anything anymore, even the stuff that actually mattered to him. All he could think about was that inevitable progression of time, how he was working so hard and running so hard to keep up, and at the end of the day it didn’t seem to amount to anything.

He somehow got so caught up in the hassle of keeping up with the future, it’s like he lost it entirely.

Weirdly enough, until someone helped him figure it out all he wanted to do was talk to Riley.

Of course, she is his best friend. She knows him better than anyone, and regardless of whether he talked about it or not, just communicating with her makes him feel a little bit better. The weight on his shoulders feels a little bit lighter. All the stuff going on around him, all the places he has to be and things he can do, and all his mind can seem to stomach is the possibility of talking to her.

All the world supposedly at his collegiate fingertips, and all he wants to do is go home.

It takes an intervention from about half of his close friends at A&M to force him to confront how much effort he’s putting into ignoring that something is wrong. His grades are slipping, and if he’s not careful he’s seriously going to jeopardize his own chances of getting into graduate school. He’s barely sleeping, and his eating habits have gone out the window. He’s become isolated without even realizing it, and his personal relationships definitely take the hit because of it.

When he looks back on it, he knows the breakup between him and Olivia was his fault. In fact, he should be grateful it went as cleanly as it did since he had essentially blocked her out of his life along with everyone else. She had every right to be upset with him, but he supposes with the state he had sunk himself into she was feeling more sympathetic than she may have otherwise. Still, the necessary conversation happens, and the two of them agree it’s best to go their separate ways for a while he’s figuring all this out.

It’s frighteningly impressive how for a while becomes forever. Although Olivia is still one of the nicest people he’s ever known and if asked he’d consider her a friend, after falling out of touch before senior year they basically stop talking altogether. Because that’s how life is, he knows—no matter how good someone is for you, sometimes they go away. Sometimes, you’re the one who’s walking away.

Alex makes him talk through these thoughts and all the others, working their psychology major to its maximum before recommending that he get some professional help even if it’s only temporary. They explain that lots of people need long term counseling, but sometimes patients just need a few weeks to help get things back under control. Considering end of term is coming around the bend, he’ll have lots of time to get that assistance.

When it comes to deciding what to do for the summer, Lucas finds himself staying in Texas with Marissa’s family. Riley is studying abroad so she won’t be home, and Zay is performing in community theater in Chicago so he doesn’t see the point in going back to Philly. He doesn’t tell his parents about what’s going on with him because he doesn’t know how, or if they would even care, so he just explains to his mother that he’s picking up another internship and that he’ll see her in the winter. Marissa’s father runs a practice of his own and pulls Lucas on as a summer intern, and Alex and Sanjay work to help him find a professional he can start seeing once a week.

Lucas knows he’s lucky. For every place the universe has failed him in the last two decades it’s also found a way to bring irreplaceable people into his life, so he supposes maybe he should stop criticizing it so much. Maybe, just like him, it’s doing the best it can with what it has.

He doesn’t tell anyone else about the low point as long as he can manage it, preferring like most aspects of his life to keep it as private as possible. It isn’t until he goes home for his last winter break and Riley asks him how the year has gone that he cracks. It’s impossible to keep it under the surface any longer when the only person he wanted to be around for so much of that time is suddenly looking him in the eyes and giving him that look where it’s so obvious she knows something is up.

Because of course she does. Because she knows him better than anyone else.

When he finishes explaining all of it, the slump and the deteriorating drive and the overwhelming nature of being in his own head the last year or so, Riley assures him that everything is going to work out. She validates his frustrations and thanks him for confiding in her, even though it’s not the first time he’s done it. It’s far from the first time she’s been a rock in his life, and when she promises him that she’ll be there for him every step of the way to recovery, he doesn’t have one ounce of doubt in his heart that she means it.

Riley has always been that way, a star outshining every other piece of his life and guiding him in the right direction even when the world around him grows particularly dark. When she told him about the content of people’s hearts all those years ago he decided hers was the best anybody could hope to have, and she’s proven him right every day before and after that moment. She’s important to him in a way he doesn’t think he could ever properly articulate, and it’s nearly unfathomable to believe there was a time where she wasn’t in his life at all.

Lucas can remember the day she moved in across the street, and it’s because he literally cannot imagine what his life would be like if she hadn’t.

* * *

The end of his final Adams Street summer doesn’t feel quite like summer at all.

It’s as if the whole neighborhood is in a state of transition, each of the recent college graduates gearing up for the next step in their professional lives. Bedrooms feel more like box storage than actual living quarters, gearing up for grander moves to new homes that may or may not be permanent. Maya is prepping the last of her things to travel back with her to Los Angeles. Zay is sending some stuff to his apartment in Chicago before setting off on a six month tour with a dance troupe all across the country. Smackle is heading up to Boston for graduate school, taking Farkle with her and moving in together for the first time out there in the real world.

Summer always felt like an end in his youth, most notably the end of freedom. Now, it suddenly feels more like a beginning.

Either way, the process of packing up all of his life to ship across the country to California is easier said than done. He’s never considered himself particularly sentimental about his house or thought he had many belongings to ruminate over, but the longer he sits cramped in his boyhood room sorting through clothes and books and miscellaneous items the faster he realizes how wrong those assumptions were.

He’s acutely aware he has way too many blue shirts. He should really shake that up when he goes out west.

With only a few days left he’s finally starting to get to the bottom of the piles, taking an odd trip down memory lane as he determines what to keep or what to throw away. It’s a nice surprise when he finds his old Philadelphia cap, the headwear that completed all his outfits from fifth to about tenth grade. He can’t help but smile when he looks at the worn grey polyester, slipping it backwards onto his head for old time’s sake as he finishes going through the items on his bed.

An array of yearbooks from elementary school. A Chubbie’s bobble head sporting a missing clay hand, only spared the garbage bin because ten-year-old Riley had convinced him that he’d be hurting its feelings if he tossed it because he broke it. The horrible brick of a cell phone he had in elementary school, long since dead to the world and probably not revivable.

He tries not to get caught up in the sheer volume of how much time is in encapsulated in this room. It wasn’t always pleasant and there were plenty of days where he hated its very existence, but it’s been present since the moment he was brought into the world and back to this neighborhood where he would spend his entire life up to this point.

It’s a lot to wrap his brain around. Especially since the harsh realities of time and how he may or may not be utilizing it to the fullest seems to be an anxiety trigger for him, according to his therapist.

So he takes a deep breath, counts to ten in his head, and moves on. He pushes the remaining items he has to consider further to the desk and chair at the foot of the bed, grabbing a familiar book from his side table and flipping it open to the inside cover. Whenever he finds himself getting overwhelmed, this is always where he ends up.

_Dear Lucas_ ,

_I hope this updated edition of your favorite leisure read (you’re the only person on this Earth who would read this book for fun… nerd) continues to bring you as much joy and success as the first. You’re going to be an amazing veterinarian someday, and I’ll be so thrilled to tell everyone I know that my awesome, heroic best friend made it so far because of a silly book I checked out for him at the library when he was grounded in seventh grade._

_Always in your corner. Always believing in you. Always your best friend._

_Merry Christmas!_

_Much love,_

_Your Secret Santa_

Lucas can’t help but smile at the signature. It’s humorous that Riley bothered to remain anonymous in her message, as if anyone else in their group would’ve gotten him something so perfect. As if anyone else would take the time or have the words to write such a thoughtful message. As if anyone else would call him their awesome, heroic best friend.

He wonders if she has any idea how many times he’s read this note in the last two years. If she’ll ever know how often it’s kept him going or brightened his day when few other things could. How it grounds him faster than almost anything else, second only to Riley herself.

“Wow, it’s really clearing out in here.”

Lucas lifts his gaze, finding his mother leaning in the doorframe and peering into the space. It’s somewhat of a shock to see her there, only because for the other two decades of history trapped in the walls of this room she’s is rarely featured anywhere near it.

He knows she’s trying to make an effort. For whatever reason the further into his own life he gets the more Grace suddenly decides she doesn’t want him to leave, having attempted to build more meaningful connections with him the last couple of years than she did for the first twenty of his adolescence.

At first he was angry. But he’s been tired of being angry, and he knows he himself is far from perfect. Everyone makes mistakes or choices they regret—he’s got plenty of his own even so objectively young—and if the content of his heart is as good as his best friend thinks it is then he knows he needs to open it enough to forgive his mother. He needs to start letting her in regardless of how late to the party she is, otherwise he might never make peace with it.

Somehow, he has to believe the content of her heart isn’t so bad either. For all the pain of her own she’s endured with her apathetic husband who may as well be absent, whatever is there at her core must’ve been resilient enough to keep going.

“Wasn’t much to begin with,” Lucas admits, closing the encyclopedia and getting to his feet.

Grace crosses her arms, surveying the space while searching for what to say next. Putting in an effort is admirable, but it’s evidently hard work when you’re so out of practice. “Do you need any help?”

“Nah, I don’t think so.” He rests his hands on his hips, nudging at a half-filled box with his foot. “It’s mostly just sorting stuff at this point. Maybe when I get to the sealing phase. I was never all that great at taping boxes securely enough in college.”

“Oh, well. When you get to that part, you know where to find me.”

Lucas nods, offering her a tight smile before dropping his gaze down to the boxes.

Hard, hard work.

“Well, I’m off to the writer’s workshop,” she says with an exhale, straightening up and clasping her hands together in front of her. “Then some of the ladies are going out for drinks, so I may not be back until late.”

“Are you driving?”

She jingles the keys in her hands indicatively. “Designated driver. Only going along for the company.”

“Very responsible of you.”

“Aw, thank you.” She smiles, tilting her head and causing her ponytail to bob to the side. “How nice to have my son compliment me on my safe social practices.”

There’s a joke in there somewhere that makes both of them chuckle, even though he’s pretty sure anyone with a normal parent-child dynamic wouldn’t necessarily be able to point out what exactly warranted a laugh. He’s not sure himself. “Where’s Kenneth?”

“Who knows,” Grace mutters, her slight eye roll shifting into a grimace when she realizes she’s slipped out of her pleasant façade surrounding anything related to their lacking third family member. She makes a face and locks eyes with him, obviously gearing up an apology. He doesn’t see what for, considering the illusion of his father being anything but an asshole was shattered long, long ago.

“It’s cool, mom,” he says, stuffing his hands in his pockets and shrugging. “I get it.”

She gives him a light smile, sharing that understanding with him. Finding solace in the fact that while her husband is perhaps the most detestable human being in the world, maybe she’s not alone in having to work through it. Maybe she never was.

Gently, she reaches out and touches his elbow affectionately. Then she’s gone, heading down the stairs without another moment to linger on the bonding moment they probably should’ve had years ago.

“Don’t forget to take the trash out,” she hollers up the stairs. There’s a pause. “Please!”

“Got it,” he shouts back, crashing back onto his bed. He stares up at the ceiling and listens for the telltale sounds of Grace’s car leaving the driveway, allowing silence to settle over the house for a few minutes before he gets up to clean.

As if to emulate the transitional energy consuming so much of their block, Adams Street is currently undergoing renovations of its own. The entire roadway has been repaved and repainted, closing down operations during the afternoon hours to finish the job. It’s the kind of the project he would’ve loved when he was younger, as lots of the younger kids from down the block have been coming up to ride their bikes and play without worrying about oncoming traffic. Enjoying a summer of true freedom, not paying any attention to how close it is to ending.

What a gift it is, to be young enough to consider time an irrelevancy.

Lucas flicks on the porch light as he heads down the driveway, dropping the bags on the curb like he’s done a million times before. He realizes in a burst of surrealism that this may very well be one of the last times he ever does it, feeling another prickle of anxiety scatter across his shoulder blades.

He takes another deep breath, searching for a diversion for his rapidly running brain. When he lifts his gaze from the curb and glances across the street, his prayers are answered in the form of what has always been his most effective distraction.

Riley is stopping at her curb just at the same time as him, plopping the family recycling bin down and wiping her hands of the chore. She’s clearly dressed for a night in, decked in sweats and an NYU t-shirt. Her hair is piled messily on top of her head in a tie job that couldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds.

Maybe he’s cursed by best friendship to find her constantly endearing, but he doesn’t think she’s ever looked prettier.

She notices him a second later, a natural smile blooming across her face the moment recognition colors her features. He mirrors it back without even thinking about it, completing a pattern that has occurred endless times in the sprawling history of Adams Street. If he thinks about it, he’s pretty sure the only reason he so willingly took out the trash all the time in the first place was for the chance of seeing her.

Riley glances over her shoulder and then hops off the curb. She looks both ways before crossing their very empty cul-de-sac, darting over to join him as he makes his way back onto his porch steps.

They settle down next to one another, Riley tucking her hands under her knees and bouncing her legs on the step beneath them. She leans over to nudge him with her elbow, eliciting a grin from him as she tilts her head in his direction.

“Hi.”

“Hey.”

“Nice hat,” she comments, eyeing it pointedly. Her expression is a bit mocking. “Where’d you find that vintage item?”

“Packing up for the move. There’s a lot of hidden treasure up in that decrepit wasteland of a bedroom, believe it or not.”

She sighs, shaking her head. “It’s funny. I thought I buried that thing deep enough that you’d never find it again…”

“Ha ha.” They exchange silly looks, Riley sticking her tongue out at him as if they’ve jumped back a decade in time and are wasting away the summer hanging around on his porch. “How goes your prep?”

Riley deflates, scratching at her ear. She props her chin on her palm. “Fine. It’s only Penn State, you know, so it’s not like I’m going very far.”

“ _Only_ Penn State,” he repeats, mocking her aloof tone. “As if that’s not the number one graduate school for psychology in the country. You know, _just_ Penn.”

“You know what I mean!” She elbows him again, descending into giggles when he retaliates by making to step on her sandaled toes. “I just mean it’s not like my transition is as grand as the rest of you guys. Smackle and Farkle are going to Boston, and you and Maya—,”

“California,” he fills in for her.

She nods, as if she’s still attempting to wrap her mind around it. “California.”

“It definitely does make packing a little more complicated. Trying to really determine what’s worth bringing along and what’s worth leaving behind. It’s a weird amount of gravity for something like Chubbie the one-handed sous-chef.”

Riley presses a hand to her heart. “Aw, Chubbie! You kept him all this time?”

“I mean, you practically accused me of murder if I didn’t.”

“Oh! That totally reminds me.” Her eyes light up as she jumps to her feet. “There’s something I have to give you.”

Lucas frowns. “Me?”

“No, the other you,” she teases, making a face at him. She swivels in front of him and holds out her hands, waiting for him to take them. “Come on, up and up.”

She wiggles her fingers in his face until he relents, linking their hands together and allowing her to pull him to his feet. They jog their way back across the empty street and up the steps towards her house, Riley leading the way into the entryway.

“Wait right here,” she instructs, patting his shoulder before disappearing up the stairs and out of sight.

Lucas stuffs his hands in his pockets, leaning back against the wall and gazing around the Matthews family home. It’s familiar to him in a way few places are, more of a home than his actual one on the other side of the street. He’s lost count of how many afternoons he’s spent in that living room, or how many nights he’s snuck in through the back door to stay up talking with Riley for hours. For all the history trapped in his bedroom there’s an equal amount here, making up for all the angst and irritation and feelings of invisibility with immeasurable good.

Before he can get too caught up in reminiscing, Riley returns with a moderately-sized plastic bin in her arms. “You might want to take a look through this.”

She plops it at the foot of the stairs and gestures for Lucas to take the reins. He gives her a curious look and crouches down onto the last step, prying off the lid.

It’s a strange hodge-podge of vaguely familiar items. There’s a t-shirt of his he hasn’t seen in ages, as well as his high school baseball sweatshirt. There’s even a relic of A&M, one of his crew necks he feels like he hasn’t seen since he got it.

The only criteria that seems to connect the assorted items are that they all belong to him.

“Is this all my stuff?”

“Yeah,” Riley admits sheepishly, shuffling her feet as he continues to paw through its contents. “I found a lot of it while I was doing my own packing. I figured you might want to go through it and collect what you deem worth reclaiming. Most of it, I assume.”

For what it’s worth, it’s a relatively full bin of stuff he didn’t even notice he was missing in the first place. Evidently, he didn’t miss it all that much. “Holy cow, Riley.”

“I know. I couldn’t believe how much of it I kept finding. I must’ve been accumulating it over the years. I’m like some scrappy little scavenger, like a rat or a… vulture, or something.”

The last word he would use to describe Riley Erica Matthews is vulture. She’s far too cute for that.

“Go with a magpie. They have a reputation for being collectors even though the research goes against it, but they’re pretty and one of the most intelligent animals in the species.”

“Magpie, then.” She chews her thumbnail, crossing her arms as if to make herself smaller. “Sorry I kept it for so long.”

Seeing as he didn’t even notice any of it was gone, he doesn’t see why she needs to be apologizing. Besides, he’d be lying if he claimed he hadn’t ever taken a thing or two from her and never returned it. He just found one of her journals from eighth grade where they spent the entire year passing notes back and forth in history class. He’s got a pencil pouch basically made up of pens and pencils he’s borrowed from her and forgotten to give back, offering an odd explanation for why he writes so many of his notes in purple ink. He has a scrunchy of hers he stole when he was picking on her in seventh grade, a novelty item that has inevitably ended up following him to college as weird room décor or on his wrist under his jacket sleeve for when he needs something to preoccupy his fingers during class.

In any case, it’s evident to him that she is far more attached to any of it than he is. He can see it in how fondly she’s gazing down at the bin, like all of his old clothes have some deep sentimental value that he’d never be able to appreciate the same way.

“You know what?” He looks up at her. “You keep them.”

“What? No. No, I can’t do that.”

“You already have, apparently, and I haven’t missed them.”

She huffs, obviously dissatisfied with the suggestion by some form of modesty. “Come on. There has to be something in here that you want to hold onto. What about the baseball sweatshirt? You have to keep that.”

“I think you’ll get a lot more use out of it than I will.” He rises to his feet, silencing her protests with a finger to her lips. “Riley. I want you to have them. Give them the attention they deserve. For me.”

She frowns at his finger, pretending to bite at it before directing her gaze back down to the bin. She ponders for a moment, and Lucas can literally see the way her features shift into something softer the longer she looks at them. He has no doubt they’re in good hands right where they are.

“Fine,” she relents. “But only because you insisted.”

“Of course.”

Riley leaves the bin on the steps and walks with him back out onto the porch, the summer night supplying just enough of a breeze to fight off the mugginess that so often permeates an August evening in Philadelphia.

Although there’s nothing left to say in particular, neither of them make a move to say goodnight. Lucas glances out to the big oak tree, filled with another dose of nostalgia.

“You know, the only reason I came over here the day you moved in was because I wanted to climb that tree.”

She raises her eyebrows at him, playful smirk already intact. “Really? I thought you were just oh so naturally helpful at five years old. I thought you were just dying to meet the adorable girl moving in across the street.”

“Since I didn’t even know you existed until you pelted me with acorns, I’m going to have to go with no on that one.” She grins, fond of the memory. “It was really just about the tree. You came as an add-on.”

“Well, considering you spent all of elementary school up there like a sloth and returning the acorn favor, I can believe that.” She crosses her arms, tilting her head as she sizes up the oak. “You know, almost two decades in this house and I never did climb it.”

His jaw drops open. “What?”

“No kidding. Guess I just never saw the appeal. Now I’m wondering if maybe I missed out.”

“Um, not maybe. You absolutely did. That tree is the only reason we’re friends.”

“Oh, sure.” She laughs, scoffing. After a moment of contemplation she gives him a look, raising her eyebrows. “Never too late to try though, right?”

Without another word she hops off her porch and runs over to the base of the tree, kicking off her sandals and placing her hands against the bark. It’s clear she has no idea where to begin, and Lucas knows he should join her before she ends up hurting herself in spite of her plucky attitude.

If he can teach her to ride a bike and he can teach her how to drive, he can teach her how to climb a tree. Probably.

“Whoa there, eager beaver,” he says, catching up to her and pulling her arms back from the trunk. “How about you make a game plan before you go all chipmunk and scale that thing?”

She huffs, shaking the loose strands of hair from her face. “If you at seven can climb it, I think I can manage it at twenty-one. Give me a little credit.”

“I’m only saying you need a strategy.” He stands next to her and looks up to the tree branches, a pathway still familiar to him even though he hasn’t climbed it in years. “See that branch to the right there? That’s your starting point to pull yourself up. It’s low-hanging but not spindly. Then you’ll go for the big one on the left with the knot in it, and once you get there you should be able to find a place to perch.”

“Right. Easy. Piece of cake.”

For all the confidence in her voice, she doesn’t make a move to do anything about it.

Lucas grins, shaking his head and crouching down. “Here, I’ll give you a boost.”

With his help she manages to hoist herself up to the first branch, shakily maneuvering her way amongst the leaves until she finds the alcove where he used to spend all his afternoons. There’s a nice cluster of intertwined branches where he and Zay used to hideout all the time, perfect for sitting around and doing nothing at the age of ten.

“Real nice up here,” Riley says, leaves rustling as she adjusts. “What are you waiting for?”

Lucas blinks. “You want me to come up there too?”

“Well, of course. You’re inviting me into your tree home, and you’re not even going to give me the tour?”

He doesn’t know if it’s the best idea considering both of them are much larger than they were in the days where he and Zay could share the space, but it’s an alluring invitation. After all, Riley has always been incredibly hard to say no to.

Within seconds Lucas is scaling the bark to join her, muscle memory doing a majority of the work for him. Miraculously they both manage to fit into the nook of sturdier branches, sitting closer than usual in an effort to save space.

Riley stretches out her legs, laying them on top of his and reclining back against the branch behind her head. She exhales a sigh, staring up through the leaves towards the stars. “You’re right, I was missing out. I can see why this is the foundation of our friendship.”

Lucas smiles, managing to tear his gaze from her to examine the branches around them. It’s been so long since he was up here for prolonged amounts of time, and it’s fun to remember all the stupid things he and Zay used to do while holed away up here for hours at a time. Pretend to do homework. Practice their acorn aim (which for Zay was almost as pathetic as his snowball trajectory). Imagine they were scouts in the second World War, spying on enemy territory (Riley and Maya) and preparing to unleash a fury of ammunition (acorns) if things got too suspicious. Carving all those stupid things into the bark…

All the sudden, Lucas’s blood runs cold and he sits up a little straighter as the memory hits him. He scans the bark in front of him and feels his stomach drop to the floor at one of the ridiculous engravings he left in the branches when he was in middle school, spending a lot of time playing vandal alone after Zay twisted his ankle. One of those messages that Riley was never going to see because she never, ever climbed the oak tree in her front yard.

Glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, she can see her gaze has fallen to the same spot. Her expression is hard to read, eyes squinted slightly as she makes out the lettering through the dark.

_R + L._

Lucas considers pitching himself out of the tree. If his younger self were here, he knows he’d launch himself headfirst out of sheer embarrassment. He’s grateful for the dim porch lighting because he knows his cheeks are red from how hot they suddenly are.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

After what feels like an eternity, Riley’s lips curl into a smile. She shifts her gaze from the branch to him, tilting her head back against the branches again. “Funny, the things we did when we were kids, huh?”

He has to remember how to swallow. Clearing his throat, he nods.

Riley relaxes and lets her eyes flutter closed, exhaling another content sigh. Surrounded by the greenery and glowing in the golden light of the porch, Lucas discovers he was wrong earlier when he decided she’d never looked prettier than when she was standing on the curb. It’s impossible to pick a time where she’s more beautiful than any other—his best friend is crystalline, unceasingly stunning at every moment from every angle that there’s no conceivable way to narrow it down.

It’s a pure reflection of how she is on the inside, carrying that solid gold heart. Always in his corner, believing in him even when he doesn’t believe in himself. The only person he wants to see even on his worst days, the person who makes Adams Street worth coming back to every chance he gets.

The address doesn’t matter. They say the heart is where the home is, and if that logic is sound, then it’s clear where his is. Riley Matthews has always had his heart, and she’s taken pretty good care of it over the years. Wherever she is, that’s where he wants to be at the end of it all.

“I haven’t really been fair to you,” he murmurs.

Riley opens her eyes, giving him a curious look. “What do you mean?”

“Just in the way I’ve been acting,” he says slowly, trying to find exactly what he wants to say. How to articulate how grateful he is for everything, how much she’s changed him without even realizing it. How he knows he was giving her mixed signals when he was with Olivia whether he knew it at the time or not, and regardless of whether or not she only sees him as a friend he hates that he put her in that position. “I’ve been kind of a mess lately. Which you know.”

“As opposed to every other year where you were a mess,” she teases.

He waves her off, earning a cheeky grin from her. “I just… I know I was being weird. And I never really gave you an explanation. Or apologized. I don’t want you to think… I don’t know.”

“It’s okay.” She adjusts her legs against his knees, offering a soft smile. “I didn’t think anything of it.”

“There was just a lot going on in my head, and so much was changing.” He licks his lips, averting his gaze to avoid getting lost in her eyes. He doesn’t want to be any more confusing than he already is naturally. “All this stuff was changing, and I don’t know.”

He meets her eyes again, and instantly that effect she’s always had on him washes over him. A sense of calmness, an assurance that everything will be okay regardless of how uncertain they may or not be at the moment.

A promise that with her, he’ll always fit. He’ll always belong.

“I guess I just wanted to focus on something that felt the same.”

Riley’s expression softens, smile light on her lips as she nods an understanding. Lucas picks at a hangnail on his thumb, avoiding eye contact for the sole reason that his heart is pounding so hard he can hear it in his ears and she’s so close. She’s so close and so pretty he feels like he’s fourteen years old again, carving their initials into branches and daydreaming about playacted first kisses. Wondering what it might be like to kiss her again.

“Lucas.”

He lifts his head to look at her just in time to feel about five acorns bop him in the face at once, effectively shocking him out of his smitten hysteria. He gasps, scoffing when she bursts into laughter and immediately deconstructs all the tension he accidentally created. She’s always had the particularly acute gift of making him laugh when he needs it the most.

“Oh, real nice,” he says, reaching forward and poking her in the ribs. She erupts into giggles and tries to bat his hand away, shaking her head and glancing over her shoulder. “What was that, some kind of decades old payback?”

“Maybe—stop!” She hiccups, still riddled with giggles. It’s near punchy, how hard she’s laughing. “I don’t want—I don’t want to fall out—!”

Lucas can’t help his grin as he continues to pick at her. He adjusts his perch in the trees, sliding out from under her legs and bracing himself against the branches. “Oh, we don’t fall out of the tree. No, we jump like men.”

“Sexist.”

“Okay, we jump like equally cool humans regardless of gender.”

“Thank you,” she says, still hiccupping. She shifts her posture to match his, a little unsteady on the limbs of the tree. She looks down at the drop, swallowing nervously. “I can’t make this. I can’t believe you did this so many times and didn’t break your knees. Are you bionic or what?”

“Come on, you made it all the way up here.” He nudges her lightly, causing her to shudder slightly in spite of herself. She gives him the stink eye. “Do it. You can do it. Jump, jump, jump.”

“Why is everything you spent sixth grade doing so stupid?”

“I dare you,” he says, changing tactics and raising his eyebrows in a challenging manner. “Riley Matthews, I dare you to jump from this tree like a cool human regardless of gender.”

She whines over him, closing her eyes and swallowing her nerves. She tosses him one last disdainful look before dropping one leg down off the tree limb. Another couple seconds and she’s leaping from the tree, shrieking until she sticks the landing and drops to her hands and knees.

Lucas hops down effortlessly, rather impressed with her dismount for a first-time daredevil. “See, was that so bad?”

Maybe not, but Riley has always had a flair for dramatics. She flops onto her stomach and rolls onto her back, panting and laying an arm over her forehead. “That was the most terrifying experience of my life. I could have died. You could’ve killed me, Lucas Friar. And then what would you have done?”

“Well, for starters, get back all my clothes.”

She huffs, pulling her arm back to give him the full power of her glare. “I _offered_ them.”

“Please. Am I supposed to believe that was _everything_ you’ve siphoned away over the years?”

Given her lack of a response, he knows he’s right. It’s not like he’s mad about it.

“Hush and help me up,” she commands, lifting her hands in the air.

He does, pulling her to her feet. “Klepto.”

She swats at him playfully when she’s back steady on her feet. She places her hands on her hips, glancing at his house down the driveway. “So packing is going okay? Do you have enough boxes?”

It’s weird to be brought back into reality so suddenly rather than meandering in the world that exists between the two of them. Time has never really applied to that world, and it’s a jolt to be shoved back into the one where it commands everything. He supposes at some point, they’ll have to find a way to blend the two.

“Yeah, think so.”

“Do you need any help?” Riley crosses her arms, tilting her head thoughtfully. “I know how you suck at sealing packages.”

He has no idea how she knows that about him, but he’s hardly surprised. It’s precisely the kind of thing she would know as his best friend and the person who knows him better than he knows himself. Although he already told his mom he was fine, he figures maybe having a little assistance wouldn’t hurt.

“Sure.”

Lucas leads the way back across the street, holding the door open for her to step into the doorway. For how many days they’ve spent together growing up on the same block, it says a lot about how he feels about his own house that she looks out of place in the entryway. For all the years they’ve been best friends, he’s managed to keep them out of his house as often as possible.

Still, she knows her way around. She doesn’t wait up as she jogs up the stairs, hanging a right and disappearing into his room. “Wow, that’s a lot of boxes.”

“Well, you wanted to know if I had enough,” he calls up after her, shutting the front door and taking the stairs two at a time to catch up.

When he arrives in his doorway its surreal to see her standing there in the middle of the room, making a full spin to take in the whole space. Even though he’s put a concentrated effort in keeping her out of it, he can’t help but notice how the room brightens considerably the moment she steps in it. Suddenly, it feels like a place he could survive.

With her included in the scene, he could stomach the idea of calling it home.

Her expression is thoughtful. She blows air out through her lips, pushing her fly-aways back from her forehead. “Wow.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. It’s just wild to see it being all packed up, I guess. It’s been the same for so many years, at least every time I’ve seen it.” She twists her fingers together anxiously. “I knew you were going. I guess just seeing it in person…”

Reality check. He’s had plenty of those in the last few months. If she’s feeling any bit as thrown as he does when he spends too much time ruminating on the future, then he has to empathize.

Her gaze drifts to his bed, lingering there for a moment before shifting to the side table. She spots the stack of books, two equally orange and equally bulky encyclopedias only one battered and falling apart at the seams with age and overuse. In an instant, some of the tension in her features melts away.

“But I guess maybe change isn’t always bad.” She smiles, turning her gaze to him. “It can be really good, can’t it?”

In all the time he’s known her, Riley has always been stubbornly opposed to change of any kind. It colored all her decisions, impacted her otherwise rosy view of the world, and definitely had a hand in the way they viewed one another growing up. Regardless of the nature of her feelings towards him, Lucas knows part of the reason things fell apart between them when they were seniors was driven by that all-consuming fear, the anxiety that if anything between them changed it would crumble in her fingers entirely.

As they’ve clearly proven, that’s not the case. And clearly, she’s learned her lesson because of it. Riley being so willing to admit that change has the possibility to be wonderful rather than inarguably awful demonstrates her development way more than how tall she’s gotten or what year she’s about to be in school. She’s grown up now.

They both are. And as long as the fundamental truths between them remain the same—their friendship, their belief in one another, the fact that they love one another regardless of in what way—then the universe is welcome to change around them.

They’ll survive it together. They always do.

“I think it’s like anything else. Just a balance.” Lucas wanders further into the room, coming to stand next to her. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, shrugging. “Figuring out for ourselves what should have the freedom to change and what should remain the same. Being open to it rather than closed off. Letting things happen as they come.”

Riley hums, nodding along. “Gotta take these things slow. You move too fast through change, you might get hurt. Might mess it up.”

“Very wise,” he says. “Who taught you that? Some psychology professor at NYU?”

She shakes her head, effortless smile still lighting up her face. “You did.”

Lucas blinks. He can’t remember what conversation she might be referring to, but from the confidence of her tone and the way she’s looking at him he can tell she’s speaking the truth. For all the lessons he’s learned from her over the years, it’s a bit of a relief to know that maybe he hasn’t been taken all the wisdom and offering nothing in return. It’s nice to know that whatever he feels he’s gotten from their friendship and having her in his life, there’s a good chance the feeling is completely mutual.

Riley’s expression grows somber, he gaze dropping to her feet. “I’ve been thinking a lot about something you said, actually.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Something you said a couple years ago, about how the world moves so fast.”

Lucas grimaces. Two years ago was deep in the dregs of his descent into the low point that consumed the rest of his college career. Whatever Riley’s been thinking on so deeply that he said when he was in that mental place, he’s sure it can’t be all that pleasant.

“You were talking about how everything moves so fast and then before you know it you’re gone. And while I didn’t and still don’t love the depressing nature of the statement, it got me thinking. Just about how you know, life could just stop at any moment and I would have no way to prepare for it. And you know how I love to be prepared for things.”

His favorite thing in the world is when she talks. His favorite thing is when she rambles on like this, eyes twinkling and nose crinkling in thought. It’s amazing, how that nose crinkle still gives him a stomachache.

“And I just found myself thinking if things were to end tomorrow, or in a couple hours, would I be happy with how I left things? Would I have done everything I wanted and made sure everyone knew what they needed to know?”

She glances at him, locking eyes for a brief moment. Her cheeks flush and she averts her gaze again, clearing her throat.

“And I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Wondering if you would know, I mean, how much you mean to me. I know you’re my best friend, and I know we love each other. We’ve said it enough, you know.”

He hopes she realizes he understands everything she’s saying. That he’s had the same thoughts, wondered the same things, feels everything she’s expressing to a tee. But he realizes that unless he says so, unless he tells her outright like she’s attempting to right now, then she’s never going to know. As strong as their connection is, no matter how good they are at communicating, there are certain things that need to be put out there to truly be heard. To actually be understood.

Lucas has always held so much back for the fear of being ignored. For the worry that if he opens his mouth no one will understand, or even worse, no one will care. But Riley has never been that way. She’s always listened to him, and he realizes that this is something she desperately needs to hear.

“But I just felt like there’s no way you could possibly know.” She hesitates, licking her lips. “There’s no way you could know how much I…”

God, he loves her. He’s loved her for so long, he’s pretty sure there’s never been anything else.

“Riley.”

She lifts her gaze to lock eyes with him, nervous from the vulnerability of the conversation. So absolutely beautiful, inside and out.

Without another second of hesitation, Lucas pulls her close and kisses her.

His first thought is how familiar it is. Although the scope of their prior shared experience can be focused down to two, being this way with her doesn’t feel odd at all. There’s a comforting ease to it that comes from knowing each other so well, and when Riley shakes off the initial surprise and kisses him back it’s basically natural. Like they’ve been gone for so long and are finally coming home.

The second thought to pass through his mind is for all the time he spent thinking about it, he has no idea why he didn’t do it sooner.

Riley catches up to him with impressive resilience, almost as if she’s been preparing for it. Like she’s been waiting an eternity for this exact moment, for them to fall back into place. She wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him down to her level, haphazardly knocking his cap off his head in the process.

It hits the floor by his feet. Lucas takes the chance to catch his breath, breaking the kiss with a laugh. “How long have you been daydreaming about doing that?”

“Kissing, or getting rid of that hat?” She doesn’t give him the chance to specify, as if it doesn’t matter either way. “My whole life.”

Riley closes the distance between them again, and he can feel the way she’s smiling against his lips. There’s no questioning, no conversation about what’s right or wrong or upside down. It’s just him and her and their sense of togetherness, more complete than it’s ever felt before.

While it’s the grandest change to hit them after plaguing both of them with uncertainty for so many years, it’s also the easiest change in the world.

Lucas wonders if maybe they’ve just been looking at everything the wrong way. Growing up, everything feels so black and white. You can ride the bike or you can’t. People are good or bad. Either you’re friends or you’re something else, and if you trade one to have the other you’re giving it up for good.

But as he’s learned well enough over the last twenty-two years, life is never that simple. People can make mistakes, but they’re still good people in the content of their hearts. Change can be scary, but it can also be lovely. Riley is his best friend, but she can be more than that too. They can have both.

As long as there’s balance, they can be whatever they want.

All these lessons to learn, but they ended up in the right place in the end. It just takes a little time. Lucas figures maybe he shouldn’t be so afraid of it anymore.

Riley settles down on his bed, keeping them together as she drags him towards her. Obviously impatient to find their new balance, even though they have all the time in the world. Clearly welcoming this change more than she probably has any kind before, already well down the road into discovering what happens next.

Still, never hurts to double check. No more miscommunications if he can help it.

“Is this okay?” Lucas breathes, pulling back from her to get the question out. Riley interrupts him with another kiss, then pressing their foreheads together and allowing him the chance to finish the thought. “Are we okay?”

She hesitates, reclining back against his pillow and taking the time to look at him. To really absorb the moment, acknowledge the merging of their unique world with the rest of reality.

Then, another effortless smile blooms across her face. She reaches forward and takes his wrist from the mattress next to her, pressing her thumb into his skin. Gently, she moves both of their hands to his chest, searching for the pounding of his heart. For how overwhelmed he is, he’s amazed by how steady it’s beating.

“Still good.” She shifts her gaze from their hands to meet his eyes, crinkling her nose and grinning. His stomach flips right on cue.

“Still the best friend I love.”


	9. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Take me back when our world was one block wide,  
>  I dared you to kiss me and ran when you tried.  
> Just two kids, you and I…  
> Take me home where we met so many years before,  
> We’ll rock our babies on the very front porch  
> After all this time, you and I.  
> Oh my, my, my…_
> 
> \-- Taylor Swift, "Mary's Song (Oh My My My)"

When people consider moving to Adams Street, tucked away in the suburbs of Philadelphia, it’s definitely not because it’s a hip and happening place to be. It’s nowhere near as glamorous as the nearby Quincy Manors, a gated subdivision where most of the teenagers spend their weekend nights when parents are away. It’s in a good school district but a mile or so from John Adams high, so a vehicle or a bicycle is a must. Summers are blistering hot in the humidity, and winters can range anywhere from dry and bitterly cold to buried under four feet of snow.

No, when people decide to move into the cul-de-sac of Adams Street, it’s because they’ve heard its reputation. Moderately priced houses, churns out good kids. The community is less a neighborhood and more a village, and if you decide to lay down roots then you better be looking to expand your personal definition of family.

At least, that’s what the neighbors will tell you. Some of them have been here for generations, so they’re equipped to speak on the matter.

That afternoon it’s one of those brutally humid summers, and the sidewalk and roadway are swarmed with children.

The street is undergoing renovations, causing all cars to be moved to the other blocks and clearing the way for the neighborhood kids to have the run of the place. The asphalt is littered with chalk drawings and hop-scotch boards. The air buzzes with chatter and the creaking of chains on bicycles. Skateboards and scooters dominate the concrete. For that one afternoon, it’s as if every child in the subdivision is outside enjoying sunshine.

Well, almost every child.

“Would you just give it one more try?” Violet glares hard at her twin sister. “Look, everyone else is doing it.”

The ringing of bicycle bells and delighted chatter of their friends playing in the street behind them is particularly taunting. Violet glances over her shoulder to her own bike, kickstand up and waiting for her by the curb.

It’s such a responsibility, being a twin.

Josie Grace ignores her, parked stubbornly on the steps with her elbows on her knees. She’s decked out in her helmet and kneepads but not getting up from the porch steps. Her bicycle is laying abandoned in the grass on their lawn, thrown down after a fit of frustration and left to rust in the humidity. She can see the appeal in joining the rest of the neighborhood and getting back on the bike, but its less trustworthy since the training wheels got taken off. Sure, everyone else lost theirs already and are breezing down the sidewalk without her, but she doesn’t think it’s a worthy trade-off.

She’s already fallen once, and that’s enough of a warning to her. She’s got the Cuddle Bunny Band-Aid to prove it slapped on her elbow.

She turns up her nose, looking up to the blue sky instead. “No.”

Violet lets out an impressive groan, dragging her feet as she paces in front of their house. “You’re the worst. I’m trying to help, but you’re just being dumb about this.”

“I’m not being dumb. Mommy said you can’t call me that.”

“Well, are you going to tell her I said it?”

Josie Grace huffs. “No.”

“That’s what I thought. Now would you listen to me? I’m older than you, so I think I’m smarter here.”

“By twelve minutes!”

Violet is about to lose it when she sees potential rescue in the form of her father. As he steps out onto the porch and notices the yelling, that’s all it takes for him to shift gears and focus on them.

“Whoa, whoa,” Lucas says, holding his hands out in a calming gesture and joining them on the steps. He crouches down next to Josie Grace. “What’s going on?”

“JG is being dumb—,”

“Hey, now.” He raises his eyebrows at Violet, giving her a warning look. “Didn’t we talk about that word?”

Violet groans again, crossing her arms. “Sorry. Josie Grace is being silly because she hasn’t figured out how to ride her bike without the training wheels like every other kid over six on the block.”

“I didn’t ask you to stay with me!” Josie Grace bites back, tears pooling in her eyes. An habitually easy crier, just like her mother.

“Okay, okay,” Lucas pats Josie Grace’s back as she frantically wipes her eyes on the back of her hands. “Violet, go ride your bike. I can take it from here.”

Violet looks like she’s about to argue when her best friend and neighbor across the way, Analyn, calls for her from the sidewalk.

“Come on, Violet!”

Lucas watches her go, taking off down the driveway and disappearing into the mix of kids in no time. Josie Grace stays on the step next to him, cheeks flushed from crying and kicking her heels into the wood.

“So,” he says, leaning forward on his elbows. “Bike giving you trouble, huh?”

“I don’t see what the big deal is about me not riding it if I don’t want to. So everyone isn’t using their training wheels anymore. So what? If I don’t want to do it I don’t have to.”

Lucas shrugs, nodding along. “You’re right.”

Josie Grace blinks, surprised by the validation. She looks at him, confused.

“I am?”

“Sure. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to if you’re not ready.” Lucas nods to the bike, causing her to look towards it thoughtfully. “Some things take time to prepare for. I get that, believe me. If you don’t want to ride the bike, then you don’t have to until you think you’re ready.”

“Okay, but I don’t see when I’ll ever be ready.” Josie Grace exhales a heavy sigh, showing off her inherited flair for dramatics. “What if I’m never ready? What if I’m still using training wheels when I’m a big kid? What if I’m still using them when I’m you and mommy’s age?”

“Well, then you’ll have bigger problems. By then you’ll be driving a car.” Although there is a certain amount of humor to the unnecessary hysteria, Lucas can’t help but feel a little guilty at the look of horror on his daughter’s face. He grins, wrapping an arm around her shoulders bracingly. “You’ll be okay. Just takes time.”

She leans into his shoulder, pitifully watching the rest of the neighborhood racing around the street in front of her. “Nothing could make me ready. Not one thing in the whole wide world.”

“Hi!” another small voice chirps, grabbing both of their attention.

There’s a new kid standing in their driveway, a young African-American girl who can’t be any older than the twins. She’s friendly and offering them a toothy grin, showing off a missing baby tooth.

“I’m Heather. I just moved in.”

Lucas tosses a glance to Josie Grace, smiling. She’s somewhat hiding behind him, shy like usual but obviously intrigued.

“Hi, Heather. Nice to meet you. I’m Lucas.” He nudges her out of hiding. “This is Josie Grace.”

“Josie Grace! That’s such a cool name. So pretty.”

The compliment seems to win her over. Josie Grace sits up a little straighter, suddenly engaged in the conversation. “Thanks.”

“Why aren’t you playing with everyone else? Only reason I’m not yet is cause I had to help unpack before I was allowed to come out.”

“Josie and her bike are having a little bit of a spat these days,” Lucas explains delicately, watching interestedly to see how she reacts.

“No, I’m not,” Josie Grace says quickly, obviously trying to save face. Lucas pretends to be surprised. “We’re just working it out. I haven’t figured out how to use it without the training wheels.”

“Oh, well, I can show you,” Heather offers, already jogging over to the bike laying in the grass. “Is it this one?”

Josie Grace leaps up off the steps after her, hesitating before doubling back and giving Lucas a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, daddy.”

“I thought you weren’t ever going to ride that thing? Not one thing in the whole world—,”

“Gotta go, see you later!” she says offhandedly, running to catch up with Heather as she walks the bicycle to the sidewalk. Lucas grins, shaking his head and getting to his feet.

Riley emerges from the house a second later, carrying the recycling bin in her arms. She watches Josie Grace skip off with her new friend, clearly trying to recognize the unfamiliar face. “Who’s that?”

“Heather. She just moved in a couple doors down.” Lucas takes the bin without hesitation, earning a grateful smile from Riley as the two of them head down the driveway. “She’s gonna teach JG how to ride her bike.”

“No kidding? Must be a miracle worker.”

“Well, Violet did the best she could. That’s what happens when you inherit so much stubborn from your mom.”

Riley laughs, crossing her arms and raising her eyebrows at him. “Oh, me? You’re saying they get that from me?”

Lucas smirks and opens his mouth to reply when their neighbor across the way storms out of his house, trudging down the sidewalk with the newspaper tucked under his arm. He expertly steps around the strewn lawn toys in his yard and manages to reach the mailbox, stepping back from the curb as a child nearly runs his feet over on their bicycle.

Riley and Lucas exchange an amused look. “All right there, Farkle?”

“Can you believe this?” Farkle gestures to the under construction roadway, evidently miffed. “Closing down the entire street again. It’s like they didn’t learn anything from the last time they closed down the street and the project was delayed for two days because they couldn’t get the kids out of the road long enough to paint the darn thing.”

“Maybe so, but look how much fun they’re having!”

Farkle gives Riley a disdainful look. “I’m only saying, when you—Analyn, watch the curb!—I’m only pointing out that history repeats itself. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to go finish cleaning out the garage before Isadora gets back from work.”

Lucas crosses his arms. “Real serious about that renovation project, huh?”

“I’m not opposed to the kids getting their work station, believe me. And Isadora will benefit too, having a place to work at schematics for the space station from home. But the manual labor…” He exhales, running his hands through his hair like he used to when they were kids. Then he gives them an offhand wave, heading back towards the house. “See you all later.”

Riley offers him a wave, focus shifting when she notices a commotion a little further down the street. Ezekiel Minkus has fallen off his skateboard, and Violet is taking the time to help him back to his feet and teach him how to ride it properly. For her usual intense demeanor, she’s talking to him with a surprising amount of patience.

She elbows Lucas in the ribs, getting his attention and nodding in their direction. “Think we should be keeping an eye on that?”

Lucas hums, watching the kids for a few moments. Then, he shifts his gaze to Heather and Josie Grace on the opposite side of the street, JG miraculously back on her bicycle and giving it another shot.

After a moment, he shrugs, slipping his hands into his pockets. “They’re just kids. Who can really say?”

Riley gives him a knowing look, linking her arm through his. “Well, if history does repeat itself…”

Lucas laughs, shaking his head and watching an entirely new generation of kids take control of the street. Growing up on the street that was so different when he was their age, but knowing he wouldn’t have them be anywhere else.

Glancing at Riley next to him, he can’t help but think there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.

“We’ll see.” He presses a kiss to the top of her head, grinning when she leans into him and rests her cheek on his upper arm.

“They’ve got all the time in the world.”


End file.
